OUT OF RUSSIA

By CRITTENDEN MARRIOTT

THE ISLE
OF
DEAD SHIPS

THE FASCINATING SARGASSO SEA NOVEL

“Chapter after chapter unfolds new and
startling adventures.”

—Philadelphia Press.

“A thriller from start to finish. The
book will certainly prove a delight to the
lovers of romance and adventure.”

—San Francisco Bulletin.

FRONTISPIECE IN COLOR
AND THREE ILLUSTRATIONS
IN BLACK AND WHITE

12mo. Cloth, $1.00 net.

J. B. LIPPINCOTT CO.
PUBLISHERS PHILADELPHIA

THE DIVER COMMANDED HER TO REPORT AT ONCE TO THE INNER CIRCLE OF THE BROTHERHOOD

Page [165]

OUT OF RUSSIA

BY
CRITTENDEN MARRIOTT
AUTHOR OF “THE ISLE OF DEAD SHIPS,” “UNCLE SAM’S
BUSINESS,” “HOW AMERICANS ARE GOVERNED,” ETC.

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY
FRANK McKERNAN

PHILADELPHIA & LONDON
J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
1911

Copyright, 1910, by Crittenden Marriott
Copyright, 1911, by J. B. Lippincott Company
Published February, 1911
Printed by J. B. Lippincott Company
The Washington Square Press, Philadelphia, U. S. A.

ILLUSTRATIONS

OUT OF RUSSIA

CHAPTER ONE

THE PROFESSOR was pottering about his laboratory. He called it a laboratory, this work-room down in New Jersey, where he was peacefully ending his days, but it was not such in the ordinary acceptation of the term. The brightly burning lights shone on no apparatus for distilling evil-smelling gases, no glass retorts, no long lines of bottles. What instruments it disclosed were of a kind more likely to appeal to a sailor than to a chemist, though many of them would probably have seemed odd to both. A lead-line with “marks” and “deeps,” various scoop nets, a long sectional aquarium in which various sea creatures moved, barometers, anemometers, and other “meters” for measuring winds and waters, a great globe, and piles of charts, were some of the articles the room contained, for this was the workshop of Professor Shishkin, the great Russian physicist, member of scores of learned societies, and the ultimate authority on the waves, winds, currents, flora, and fauna of the ocean.

The Professor had come to America about twenty years before, bringing with him a young daughter, a working knowledge of the English language, and a profound acquaintance with the ocean. He had secured a post in a small school, from which he had gone from one college to another, all the while growing in reputation until he came to be probably the best known physicist in the world. When he came to America, he was apparently about fifty years of age, but where and how he had passed those fifty years he never told. Obviously, he must have been a student if not a professor, and it seemed strange that one with his attainments could have lived for half a century unnoticed; yet of his early life no trace was to be had. His name did not appear on the rolls of any of the great European universities; and even after he grew to distinction, no alma mater claimed him for her own. Deliberately he had cut himself off from his early life. To him, the past was dead.

But the past is never really dead. Its beginnings are untraceable, and its ending must ever be unknown. Men put their finger on some turning point in their lives and say, “Here this began,” or, “Here that ended.” Wrong in both assertions! The beginning began long before, and the ending will not end even when R.I.P. is graven on their tombstones. At the very moment when Professor Shishkin was congratulating himself on the peaceful afternoon of his life, strenuous fate was on its way in the darkness of that March evening to call him again to action.

The avatar of fate was one who would attract attention even in New York, that melting pot of the nations. Carelessly dressed, dark, with high cheek-bones and glowing eyes, even the casual might pronounce him a fanatic who was living on his nerves and declare that some day the nerves would burn out and the man collapse.

At the door he gave his name to Olga Shishkin, the Professor’s daughter, now grown to womanhood, and she took it to the Professor in his laboratory.

The Professor was puzzled. “Maxime Gorloff,” he repeated doubtfully. “I don’t recall the name. Did he say what he wanted, Olga?”

Olga shook her head. “No,” she answered. “Only that he wanted to see the distinguished Professor. He seemed very much in earnest. He speaks English well, but with an accent. I think he must be an immigrant.”

“An immigrant! Eh?” The Professor did not measure men by the price of their steamer passages. “Well, show him in. I am always glad to talk with strangers, especially if they are very much in earnest. They usually have a new point of view and can teach me something. Show him in.”

The man came in. If a shade of disappointment crossed his face as he noted the Professor’s white hair and wasted limbs, it disappeared as he returned the latter’s courteous greeting. “I have come many miles to see you, Professor,” he declared quietly, as he took the chair proffered.

“So!” The Professor preened himself with harmless vanity. People often came many miles to see and consult him. “Many miles!” he repeated. “That means so different a thing to-day than it did when I was young. Fifty miles were very many in those days.”

The man Maxime nodded understandingly. “And four thousand is many to-day; yes! Moscow is four thousand miles away.”

“You come from Moscow?” The Professor’s tone expressed only polite interest. Moscow was indeed very far from him, mentally as well as geographically.

“Yes, from Moscow! From the House of the Seven Feathers—Brother.”

The Professor sat rigid, the smile fading slowly from his lips. His hands slowly tightened on the arms of his chair until the knuckles showed white. “I—I—did not catch—that is, what—the House of the Seven Feathers, did you say?”

Pity showed in the young man’s eyes, but he did not waver. “Yes, I said that—Brother,” he reiterated.

“I—I don’t understand.”

Maxime leaned forward. “What shall I say to remind you?” he asked. “Shall I recite the oath of brotherhood or call the names of the Defenders of the Cause? Shall I adjure you by fire or steel or rope? I come from the House of the Seven Feathers, Brother. Make answer!”

The Professor’s dry lips moved. “What is their color, Brother?” he asked, the words dropping unwillingly from his lips.

“Red!” The man touched his hand to his forehead.

“May they prosper!” The Professor stroked his beard. The first shock was past, and the words came easier. After all, the visit could portend little. He was too old. “Very well,” he said. “I acknowledge the call. What will you?”

“The Brotherhood has need of you.”

“The Brotherhood has no longer a claim on me. I did it good service once. I gave it my youth and my early manhood, and I paid for it to the full. That was twenty years ago. For twenty years I have had no intercourse with it. My obligation is ended.”

“So long as fire burns and water flows; so long as steel cuts and grass grows; till death and after it,” quoted the other softly.

“But I am no longer a Russian; I am an American citizen.”

“Adoption does not free a man from his mother’s call. Your long exemption only adds to your obligation.”

The Professor moved uneasily in his chair. Fear was growing on him, but he tried to shake it off. “I am not in sympathy with the present aims of the Brotherhood,” he protested. “I have lived too long in the outer world. No cause was ever helped by murder. Besides, Russia is not fitted for self-government.”

Maxime shrugged his shoulders. “We will not discuss it,” he declared. “The Brotherhood calls you. Will you obey, or must I first remind you of what it did for you twenty years ago, just before you fled secretly by night from the palace of the Grand Duke in St. Petersburg, bearing in your arms——”

“Stop! Stop!”

But the man went on pitilessly. “Twenty years ago,” he said, as one repeating a lesson, “you were known by the name of Lladislas Metrovitch. You were a subordinate member of the Brotherhood, and rendered it good though not material service. You were married twice, the second time to an American lady who had been the governess of your nieces. You had one child by her. You were well known for your scientific attainments. One day you were arrested, charged with sedition. You disappeared. Your property was confiscated, your household scattered.

“Three years went by, during which you rotted in the dungeons of the fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul. Then, by the aid of the Brotherhood, you escaped—old before your time, broken, feeble. You sought for your wife, your family. You could learn little of them. At last you heard that your wife was dead, and that her child and yours was being brought up in the household of the Grand Duke Ivan. You did not dare to claim the child openly, but, aided by the Brotherhood, you stole her and escaped with her to America.”

The Professor raised his head. His shoulders shook. The forgotten horror of those by-gone days had all come back as if it had been but yesterday. He was about to speak when the man interposed.

“I have more to tell,” he said. “When you fled from Russia you thought your wife was dead. You were deceived. She did not die until about a year ago.”

“Not dead! Not dead!” The Professor’s face flushed red, then changed to a ghastly pallor. “Not dead!” he muttered.

“No, not dead!” The worst was over, and the man hurried on. “There was much connected with your arrest that you did not know. You believed that it was due to your association with the Brotherhood. You were wrong. You were arrested because the Grand Duke Ivan admired your wife.”

The Professor’s shoulders shook, but he said no word. Age dulls the capacity to feel; cools the passions as well as the affections. The old man had borne much; no further shock could greatly move him.

“You disappeared. Ivan was kind to your wife, but declared that your arrest had been ordered by the Emperor himself, and that he could do nothing. Soon you were reported dead. Not long after he married her—morganatically, of course. She is not to be too much blamed. She was penniless, alone, in a strange land, with a child to support. She married him. When you stole your child you stole it from her.”

The Professor’s dry lips moved. “I did not know,” he murmured.

“No, you did not know. The fault was not yours, but that of the system we are trying to destroy. So much for the past! Now for the future. Will you obey the orders of the Brotherhood?”

Maxime’s voice dropped, and he sat silent, watching the older man dumbly fighting through the shock. Pity was in his eyes, but relentlessness was there also—the relentlessness of the priest who pities the victim, but does not drop the sacrificial knife. Patiently he waited for the other to speak.

At last the words came, and Maxime’s face flushed with triumph as he heard them.

“What does the Brotherhood require?” the Professor asked hollowly.

The younger man stretched out his hand to the great globe that stood beside him and twirled it on its axis. “In March, just two years ago,” he began, “the ship Orkney sailed from London for St. Petersburg with five millions in gold on board, consigned to the Russian government. It was the people’s gold, borrowed on the people’s credit, to aid in enslaving the people. We swore it should never reach St. Petersburg. We kept our word. The Orkney was wrecked in the night in the Gulf of Bothnia—no one survived to tell where. Russia long sought for it in vain. We ourselves sought for it in vain. But now, at last, a clue has reached our hands.”

“Well?”

“It is not perfect yet, but it will be. Marie Fitzhugh, our agent, will be here in a few hours, and will forge the last links. Her task is difficult, but she will succeed. By one means or another, she will succeed. I would have waited till she had finished her part before seeing you, but I have been ordered to another duty and must leave to-night. So she herself will send you word—perhaps to-morrow. If not to-morrow, soon after.”

“Well?”

“If she succeeds, we shall be able to go to the spot and get the gold. If she fails, we nevertheless shall know approximately where to look for it. But, as you are aware, no vessel can dredge in the Baltic without being watched. We do not want to find the gold for Russia to seize. So we come to you for help.”

“What?” Amazement showed in Professor Shishkin’s face and voice. “Are you serious?” he demanded.

“Why not? You have spent a lifetime studying the sea. You have made a specialty of the Baltic. You have won a great name by your work there. What more natural then than that you should revisit your chosen field? What more natural than that you should take divers with you to explore the sea-bottom? You, and you alone, of all the Brotherhood, can do this without suspicion. You, and you alone, can get the gold safely on board after it is found.”

“But——”

“There are no buts when the Brotherhood speaks, and it has spoken. If the task be difficult, the more honor in accomplishing it. A ship will be provided, manned, and equipped. Your sole duty is to prepare such apparatus as you may need for your scientific work, and to spread abroad the alleged object of your trip. Probably you had better send an announcement of it to the newspapers. Of course you will not do this until Marie notifies you.”

“Very well.”

“One thing more,” went on the messenger, gravely. “I am instructed to command you to take your daughter with you. Her presence will add force to your declaration that the trip is purely scientific.”

The Professor shook his head. “I cannot do it,” he declared. “I cannot and will not take Olga to Russia, under any circumstances. You know why.”

“The Brotherhood commands it.”

“I will appeal.”

“There is no appeal, as you know.”

“Then I refuse.”

The man sprang to his feet. “Refuse, do you?” he cried, in a sibilant hiss that seemed to fill the room. “Refuse? Have you forgotten the penalty of disobedience? Have you forgotten the oath you took?—‘If I fail in obedience, may I be cut off, I and my children and my children’s children, and my name live no more forever.’ Do you remember, Professor Shishkin?”

The man paused, and his voice changed. “Believe me, I am sorry,” he murmured; “but I, like yourself, am a subordinate. It is the Brotherhood that speaks, not I. And the Brotherhood speaks for the people—do not forget that—speaks for the great, inarticulate Russian people, struggling to burst their age-long shackles. While we sit here, men are sacrificing their lives and women their honor for the cause. Who are you to hold back? No harm will come to your daughter, but even if the risk were ten times greater, still she must take it. You and she both owe it to Russia.” He paused. “What shall I say to the Brotherhood?” he demanded.

The old man bowed his head. “I will obey,” he muttered. “I must obey. I have no choice.”

CHAPTER TWO

ALSTON CARUTH lived in the Chimneystack Building. When he returned to his apartments at midnight on the day of Gorloff’s visit to Professor Shishkin, he found Marie Fitzhugh, agent of the Brotherhood, awaiting him. She had risen at the sound of his key in the lock, and stood facing him, externally cool and self-possessed, but with apprehension shining in her soft dark eyes. Her fingers trembled as they rested on the edge of the table, and her color came and went. A close observer would have said that she was frightened half to death.

Caruth, however, was not a close observer; at least, not at that moment. Amazement showed in his eyes as he snatched off his hat and whipped the cigarette from his parting lips. His fresh young face, flushed from the gaiety of the evening, looked almost boyish in its confusion.

His obvious embarrassment seemed to restore the girl’s balance. “Mr. Caruth?” she inquired, with a slight movement of her head.

Caruth nodded. For the moment he was beyond words. Her soft, musical voice and air of refinement impressed him, despite the unconventionality of her presence in his rooms at that time of the night, and his attitude became even more respectful. “Yes,” he stammered; “I am Mr. Caruth. What can I do for you?”

“I am Miss Fitzhugh. I have come four thousand miles to talk with you, Mr. Caruth. Your valet was kind enough to let me wait, though he was clearly horrified by my desiring to do so. Will you not sit down?”

Caruth hesitated. Of medium build, clean-shaven, correctly dressed, he might have stepped out of a Gibson drawing. Every detail was present, even to the strong chin and the firm mouth.

“It is late,” he suggested, glancing at the clock, the hands of which stood straight upward. “I am at your service, of course, but perhaps to-morrow——”

The girl smiled, a trifle wearily. “One does not come four thousand miles for a trifle,” she answered. “The convenances must yield to necessity. I must talk with you to-night.”

Caruth bowed and seated himself across the centre table from her. Though his surprise had not abated, he was rapidly regaining his self-possession, and as the girl resumed her own chair, he leaned forward a little, studying her thoughtfully, noting the anxious lines about her youthful eyes and mouth.

Although her English had been excellent, she did not impress him as being of American nor yet of English birth. An alien air clung intangibly about her and about her costume, which, even to his masculine intelligence, bespoke the work of a dress-maker of more than ordinary skill.

She was plainly a lady. Had it not been too amazing, he would have guessed that she must be a person of distinction in her own land—wherever that might be. That she was beautiful seemed somehow not surprising; that she was very young did. What could such a woman be doing alone in his bachelor rooms at that hour of the night.

Disguising his wonder, he sought to carry off the situation. “You are tired?” he questioned gently. “I’m afraid I kept you waiting a long time. I’m sorry. I didn’t know. Can’t I offer you something to eat or drink, Miss Fitzhugh?”

Slowly the girl nodded. “I’m glad,” she breathed, half to herself. “They told me American men were like this, but I could scarcely believe it. In Europe it would have been very different. I am proud of my half-cousins.” She paused; then answered his question. “Thank you,” she said. “I will take a glass of sherry and a biscuit.”

Caruth touched the bell. “Sherry and crackers, Wilkins,” he ordered briefly.

Not until the tray had been set before them, and the valet had gone, did either of them speak again. Caruth was slowly awakening to the fact that the beauty of the woman before him was not ordinary. It was not alone the perfection of her features that appealed to him. Every detail about her was artistically perfect. Her coloring, the poise of her head, the slim roundness of her taper fingers, the iridescent gleam of her brown hair beneath her wide hat—all satisfied his somewhat critical taste.

Suddenly he realized that he was staring, and, dropping his eyes, he forced himself to speak casually. “Your half-cousins?” he queried, answering her lead. “You are, then——”

“American? Yes! On my mother’s side, but my father is Russian, and I have never been in America until to-night. I like it, Mr. Caruth,” she ended—“what I have seen of it. It rests with you to confirm my opinion.”

Caruth questioned her with his eyes. “Yes?” he answered politely. “I hope I shall be able to do so.”

For a moment the girl did not speak. Her bosom rose and fell a trifle faster. She crumbled her cracker nervously, and her hand shook slightly as she lifted her glass. Caruth, silent, attentive, awaited her pleasure.

“Ten days ago,” she said, at last, “a letter was mailed to you at Stockholm in Sweden. It was not intended for you. It was sent to you by mistake—a mistake realized within a few hours after it had been posted. An effort was made to recover it, but it had already started on its way. Its progress has been traced carefully. It left Brest on the steamship Latourette, which reached quarantine here at eight o’clock to-night. It may be delivered to you at any moment.”

Caruth glanced at the clock and smiled. “I fear you are mistaken,” he objected. “Even if this letter reached the post-office to-night—which seems to me doubtful—it will not be delivered until to-morrow—unless, of course, it has a quick delivery stamp on it.”

The girl nodded. “It has a quick delivery stamp on it,” she rejoined promptly; “and if I understand your post-office methods, it will be delivered very soon. The mail-bags left the ship when I did.”

“You crossed on the same vessel?”

“Yes. Special arrangements had been made, and I was permitted to come up to the city on the tug that brought the mail. I came straight here and have been waiting ever since. The letter has not arrived yet; therefore it must come soon.”

“And when it does?” Caruth’s wonder was growing. Dimly he suspected whither the conversation was tending, and with growing interest he waited for his guest to come to the point. “When it does?” he questioned again, gently.

The girl’s breath came faster. She evaded a direct answer.

“You see, Mr. Caruth,” she argued, “I do not try to conceal from you the importance of this letter. It is of the very highest value to me and to my friends. To you, it is neither of value nor of importance, and, not being intended for you, it does not belong to you. It was sent to you by mistake. I have come to ask you to give it back to me unopened. Will you do it?”

Caruth drew a long breath. The inborn tendency of all men of his race to do anything that a pretty woman wishes impelled him to promise. Yet the request was certainly amazing.

“You ask a good deal, Miss Fitzhugh,” he temporized. “I know nothing of this letter. I have no correspondents that I know of in Sweden—nor in Europe either, for that matter. You may be right in saying that the letter is not intended for me; yet—well, I think I am entitled to ask a little further explanation. How is it possible for a letter not intended for me to be addressed to me here—for I presume it is so addressed?”

Miss Fitzhugh drew herself up. “Yes, the address is correct,” she answered coldly. “I have told you it was put on by mistake by a friend of mine who sends me to reclaim the letter——”

She broke off suddenly, as with startling abruptness the electric bell at the door of the apartment sounded in their ears. “There! It’s come! Go quick,” she cried.

Mechanically Caruth rose and turned to the door; then hesitated. “Wilkins will bring it,” he explained.

“Wilkins? Your man? No! Go yourself. This matter is too grave to trust to any one. Go quick.”

Under the spell of her command, Caruth stepped hastily to the door of the room and flung it open. At the end of the hall the valet was just signing the book of a letter carrier. As Caruth appeared he looked up. “Quick delivery letter for you, sir,” he said.

Caruth took the letter, nodded, and turned back into the room.

The girl was standing where he had left her. Her lips were parted, and her breath came fast. When she saw the letter her eyes glistened and she stretched out her hand.

But Caruth drew back. “One moment,” he exclaimed.

The girl’s eyes flashed. “What do you mean?” she demanded. “I have explained my claim to that letter. You have no right to keep it. Give it to me at once.” An imperious stamp of her foot put a period to her words.

A weaker man would have yielded, but Caruth set his jaws. “You have set forth your claim to this letter,” he answered coldly, “after a fashion. But, if you will pardon my saying so, you have by no means proved your right to it. It may very well have been mailed to me by mistake, and you may know it—without being entitled to it.”

Scornfully the woman stared at him. Her head was thrown back, and the breath whistled through her distended nostrils.

“So!” she breathed, at last. “So this is American manhood! For the first time in my life, my word has been questioned to my face.”

Caruth looked, as he felt, acutely uncomfortable. “No, no!” he protested eagerly. “I don’t question your word. I didn’t know that you had given it. Nobody”—a flash of admiration showed in his eyes—“nobody could look at you and doubt you. I don’t doubt that you have told me the exact facts. But I am also very sure that you have not told me all of them. If the letter does not belong to me, I will willingly surrender it to the real owner. But I might do endless harm by surrendering it to the wrong party. I cannot give it up without knowing more.”

Caruth quailed as he spoke. It was terribly hard even to debate anything this woman asked. Scarcely could he force himself to go on. “I must know more,” he pleaded. “Really, I must know more! Don’t you see that I must?”

“Very well. You shall.” The woman paused for an instant and then went on: “This letter and another were put into a bottle which was thrown overboard from a sinking ship. It floated about until ten days ago, when it was picked up by a fisherman. One of the letters was for my friends. The address was legible, and it was forwarded to us by mail, reaching us twenty-four hours later. The address on the other had partly faded; the name of the person for whom it was meant had disappeared altogether. But it was addressed in your care, at your address here. The fisherman who found it showed it to a casual American, who advised him to send it on to you, and who provided him with an envelope and postage, including a quick delivery stamp.

“When our letter came, we hurried down to question the fisherman, and from him learned what I have told you. Our letter had once contained all the information we needed, but part of the writing had been washed out by the sea water, and could not be read. We hope that the letter sent to you may be in better condition, so I have hurried over here to get it from you.”

Caruth listened amazedly. “But,” he objected, “for whom was the letter really meant?”

“I do not know. Evidently for some one associated with you. Can you not guess?”

Caruth shook his head slowly. “No,” he mused. “No, I cannot guess.” Curiously he studied the envelope he held in his hands.

The woman hesitated; then came to a sudden resolution. “There are two envelopes,” she explained. “One of them was put on by the fisherman. Open that, if you will, but be careful.”

Caruth obeyed and drew out the inclosure. It was a small envelope, dirty and stained and smelling strongly of fish. Indeed, a minute scale clung to one corner until he mechanically brushed it away. On the face, in blurred writing, appeared his own name: “Care Mr. Alston Caruth, Chimneystack Apartment Building, New York, N. Y.” Another name had been written just above, but it was indecipherable.

“The whole address was there when the fisherman opened the bottle,” explained the girl. “Part of it soaked off in his pocket on the way to shore. Can you make it out?”

Caruth studied the superscription, and shook his head. “No,” he declared; “I can make out nothing. But I soon will.” With a quick motion, he ripped open the envelope.

Before he could draw out the contents, the girl caught his hand. “Wait!” she cried. “Wait! Have I not proved my right to that letter?”

Caruth shook his head. “Certainly not,” he decided. “So far as I can see, neither you nor I have any title to it, or any right to read it. Nor do I intend to read it further than to see whether the inside gives any clue to the man for whom it is intended.”

“Wait!” Tensely the girl’s hand fell on his arm. “If nothing else will avail,” she cried, “will not my entreaties do so. I beg you, I implore you, to give me that letter. It is nothing to you; it may easily be life or death to me. You do not know for whom it is meant. You are under no obligations to an unknown writer and an unknown addressee. Do not look into it farther. Give me the letter, I implore you!”

She leaned forward. Her violet eyes gleamed into his; her lips quivered, her form shook with the stress. “Oh!” she pleaded. “Give it to me. You will give it to me?”

A sudden passion flamed in Caruth’s veins—a passion that gripped and shook him. “By God!” he cried hoarsely. “You—you——”

The girl started back and dropped her hand. Then her lips curled. Men were all alike, after all. American men were no better than their European brothers. She had seen so many; so very many. Caruth would yield, and she would despise him for it. Yet she went on. “Give it to me,” she breathed.

“No!” Caruth’s voice rang out. “No! No! Oh, you women! You beautiful women! How easily you beguile men! How dare you do it? How dare you use beauty such as yours for such a purpose? How dare you use such tools to gain your selfish ends?”

“How dare I?” The girl’s form straightened till to Caruth’s gaze she seemed to tower above him. “How dare I?” Her voice was low and thrilling, but it did not quiver. “How dare I? I dare because my country calls me to do it. All that I am and have belongs to it. My future, my liberty, my life, are all at its service. I am entitled to that letter—I swear it. If you ask it, I will tell you everything, and in so doing put my life in your hands. Shall I do it?”

Caruth drew his hand across his eyes. “No!” he said hoarsely. “I believe you. Take the letter.”

Eagerly the woman reached out her hand, but before her fingers could close upon the envelope, the portières that hung between the apartment and an inner room clashed gently on their rings and Caruth’s valet pushed his way through them. “I beg pardon, sir!” he murmured deferentially.

Annoyed, Caruth faced him, the hand holding the letter dropping to his side. “Well, Wilkins?” he questioned coldly.

“I beg pardon, sir,” repeated the man. “But I think that letter belongs to me, sir. Will you kindly look inside and see if it doesn’t begin ‘My dear Jim’ and end ‘Yours, Bill,’ sir? If it does, it is certainly mine, sir. I think it’s from my brother Bill, sir.”

CHAPTER THREE

SLOWLY Caruth regained his balance. The valet’s deferential plea came like a tonic to his overstrung nerves. Nothing was more natural than that Wilkins should have had a letter addressed in his care; he wondered that the possibility of this had not occurred to him at once. And with the advent of the valet, the whole situation had become ridiculous; he felt as if he had been playing a part in some melodrama and had suddenly stepped back into the realm of common sense. With a laugh on his lips, he turned to Miss Fitzhugh.

His lips straightened and his smile froze. Never had he seen such disappointment on the face of a woman. Her eyes glared roundly and her breath whistled through her parted lips. Blindly she caught at the table, like one about to collapse. Her trembling fingers touched a wine-glass, and mechanically she lifted it to her lips.

As she drank, the color came back to her cheeks and her eyes brightened. Caruth, watching, noticed that she was listening to some one. An instant later he realized that it was Wilkins, and, with an effort, he wrenched his eyes away from hers and turned them on the valet.

The man’s attitude was deferential in the extreme. His eyes were discreetly dropped, and he seemed unaware of the confusion his appearance had caused. “I had a brother that was a sea-faring man, sir,” he was saying. “Sailed out of Lunnon in the steamship Orkney for St. Petersburg, hard on two years ago, sir. She was never heard from again. Lost at sea somewheres, sir. The letter may be from him, sir. I told him to write me in your care, sir.”

Miss Fitzhugh did not speak, and Caruth hesitated, but only for a moment. Slowly he opened the letter and glanced at the top and bottom of the scrawl; mechanically he refolded it and slipped it back into its envelope. “You’ve hit it, Wilkins,” he declared. “The letter does begin ‘Dear Jim’ and does end ‘Your brother, Bill.’ Your claim seems to be clear.” He handed the letter to the man.

As the latter took it, the woman came out of her trance. “Wilkins!” she called sharply.

“Yes, madam.” The valet turned toward her, subservient as ever.

Without taking her eyes from him, Miss Fitzhugh sank into her chair. “So, Wilkins,” she said slowly, “you have been listening?”

“Yes, madam.” There was no defiance nor disrespect in the valet’s tones, nor was there any apology. He simply admitted the undeniable fact, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

“It is a vice of servants the world over. When one subordinates himself to the will of another, he seems to lose many of the manly virtues. If you have been listening, Wilkins, you know that I put a high value on that letter. It seems that it is yours. Well, I will buy it from you—unread. What is your price?”

Slowly the man shook his head. “I would rather not sell it, madam,” he answered.

“Nonsense! Of course you will sell it.” The woman spoke imperiously, but the valet did not change his submissive yet dogged bearing. “I have not much money with me, but I will give you five hundred dollars cash for it.”

Again Wilkins shook his head. “I can’t consider it, madam,” he repeated.

Miss Fitzhugh opened the bag that swung from her belt and threw a roll of bills on the table. “Count that for me, please, Mr. Caruth,” she ordered. “I am not quick at American money.”

Caruth obeyed in silence. Though Wilkins was clearly within his rights, he found himself regarding the man with rising anger, and would have intervened if it had seemed possible for him to do so. But the situation for the time being, at least, was dearly beyond his control. “Eleven hundred and fifty-one dollars,” he announced.

“It is all I have. Take it and give me the letter.” Miss Fitzhugh was again addressing the valet.

For the third time Wilkins shook his head. “No!” he repeated doggedly.

Undisturbed, the woman turned to Caruth. “Lend me a thousand dollars,” she requested.

Caruth started. Then, with a smile, he took out his pocket-book and added its contents to the pile. “There’s only about seven hundred here, Wilkins,” he remarked, half humorously, “but I’ll give you my check for the balance—if you’ll accept it.”

The letter rustled in Wilkins’s fingers as he twisted and turned it. Obviously he was tempted. Yet, after a quick questioning glance at the woman’s face, he again shook his head. “No, madam,” he replied coolly. “Bill took a good deal of trouble to get this to me, and I fancy it’s valuable. Any way, I think I’ll chance it, madam.”

“Valuable!” The woman stared at the valet in seeming surprise. “Nonsense!” she scoffed. “What could your Bill tell you that could be worth eighteen hundred dollars. If you suppose that the information I hope it contains will be worth anything to you in a money way, you are mistaken. It would cost you your life to try to use it. Be wise: take the money and give me the letter. The value of the letter to us lies chiefly in preventing other people from getting it.”

“Very well, madam. I’ll destroy it, then, madam.” He stepped to the fire and made a motion to throw it upon the flames.

Like a cat, the woman sprang forward and caught his arm, her silken skirts hissing as she moved. “No, no!” she cried.

A triumphant smile curled the valet’s lips. “Very well, madam,” he acceded meekly. “As you wish, madam.”

LIKE A CAT, THE WOMAN SPRANG FORWARD AND CAUGHT HIS ARM

The woman fell back a step, and stood staring at the valet. For the first time, she seemed to try to take his measure as a man, and to bend her faculties to reading the lines of his features. “Humph!” she murmured, at last, in a singular tone. “I am beginning to see. How long have you been with Mr. Caruth, Wilkins?”

“Two years, madam.”

“You brought recommendations, of course! Mr. Caruth, I should advise you to look up the writers of those recommendations at once. You may learn something that will surprise you. Now, Wilkins, listen to me.” A subtle change came into Miss Fitzhugh’s voice; she might almost have been addressing an equal. “You have played your part well and have served your master well. But you had better not push matters too far. It is dangerous.”

A glint of fear crept into the valet’s eyes, and his look wandered up and down the girl’s person, as if expecting to see a weapon; almost he seemed to fear an attack of some kind. “Dangerous in what way, madam?” he asked, still respectfully.

“Dangerous by violence. Do you think those who sent me here—four thousand miles—to get that letter, will let you escape with it? Once you have read it, there will be no more safety for you on the face of the earth. Death will dog your footsteps and sit by your side. Sleeping and waking, he will be upon you. You cannot beg for mercy, for there will be no one from whom to beg. When I go out of that door, I disappear, and even if you could find me, it would not save you, for I am only an agent, powerless to change the will of my superiors. I give you my word that in asking for that letter I am trying to save your life, as well as to gain my own ends. I give you my word that I know of no way in which you can evade your fate, once you have read it. For the last time, I beg you, take the money and give me the letter.”

There was silence in the room as the valet turned the letter over and over, staring at it, hesitating. His fingers trembled and his eyes grew wider.

With a shock, Caruth realized that murder had been threatened in his very presence—and that he was not horrified, as he knew he ought to have been. Rather, he sympathized with the woman, who towered above the man in angry beauty.

At last the valet broke the silence. “My God!” he whispered. “My God!” Slowly and unsteadily, he made his way to the table and laid the letter upon it. Slowly, he picked up the bills one by one. Then he raised his heavy eyes and for an instant looked into the face of the woman. The next moment he was at the door, hurrying away with the swift, silent footsteps of the well-trained servant. The portières fell together behind him.

With a long sigh of relief, the girl picked up the letter. The strain of the past moments showed itself in her face.

“I will return your money as soon as I can see my friends,” she declared weariedly. “Meanwhile, perhaps you will retain this.” She stripped a ring from her fingers. “It is worth more than the money,” she added.

Caruth drew back, deeply hurt. “Thank you,” he returned angrily, “but I am not a pawnbroker—even if I am accessory to a threat to commit murder. Return the money when you like.”

He spoke bitterly, for he was furious that he should have allowed his man to be forced into the surrender of his rights. Man-like, he felt the necessity of blaming his own derelictions on some one else.

Miss Fitzhugh seemed to understand, for she stepped forward and laid her hand on his arm. “Believe me, Mr. Caruth,” she declared earnestly, “believe me, you have done right. Whatever value this letter possessed belongs to us of right. The man who wrote it betrayed a secret that was not his; and, whether his or no, your valet could not have profited by it. You have done a good deed, and you have been as kind and true and staunch to me as my own brother could have been. My mother was right when she told me a woman could always appeal safely to an American gentleman. Now, good-night and good-by.”

Alarm drove away Caruth’s misgivings. “You—you will let me see you again,” he begged.

Slowly the woman shook her head. “I fear not,” she answered. “I shall sail for home on the next steamer—this very day if I can find one leaving. This is good-by.”

“But—but—where are you going? It is not easy for a woman to find accommodations at this time of the night. See, it is after twelve o’clock. Won’t you stay here? I can easily go to a hotel.”

Again the woman shook her head. “I have friends waiting for me,” she averred. “Good-night.”

The blackness of despair settled on Caruth. “But—but—I can’t let you go like this. I must see you again. Tell me where your home is. Let me hope to see you there some day. I’ve known you only an hour or two, but I can’t—I can’t let you go out of my life this way, without a word or a sign. I must see—good God! What’s the matter?”

On the woman’s face a look of frozen horror had dawned. Her eyes dropped from his to the letter she had unconsciously withdrawn from its envelope; and following them, Caruth saw in her hand a sheet of paper, stiff and white, very different from the soft, sea-stained sheet he had handled a few moments before. It scarcely needed her terrified words to give the explanation.

“He has substituted another letter!” she cried. “He was acting all the time! And I did not guess! I did not guess! He has gone with the hope of Russia in his hands!”

CHAPTER FOUR

RECKLESSLY Caruth plunged down the half-lighted steps. The elevator had stopped running, and, in any event, he had no time to wait for elevators. Down he sped, past tight-shut doors, whose occupants slept calmly despite his noisy rush; over marble steps, through tessellated halls, round slippery corners. Twice he nearly fell, but he saved himself and went on, bursting at last like a meteor on the scandalized watchman, whom the clatter of his coming had roused from a blameless nap.

“Now, now, now!” clamored that individual. “What in hell’s bells you think you’re doing, gallopin’ like this? Why, it’s Mr. Caruth!”

“Yes, it’s I.” The young man’s breath came in gasps. One does not race down eight flights of steps without showing the effects. “Yes, it’s I! Has my man, Wilkins, gone out in the last five minutes?”

“Wilkins? Naw! Say, Mr. Caruth, you’d better go to bed and sleep it off, or it’ll be you for the psychopathic ward the first thing you know.”

“Bosh! Wilkins has run away from my rooms with a valuable letter and eighteen hundred dollars in money. Are you sure he hasn’t passed you?”

“Eighteen hundred! Gee! ’Course I’m sure. Ain’t I been here right along?”

Caruth drew a long breath and glanced up the stairway down which he had just raced. So sure had he been that Wilkins had fled that he had not stopped to search in his own apartments. A suspicion that he had made himself ridiculous began to penetrate to his brain, and he glanced shamefacedly at the watchman.

That individual was regarding him suspiciously. He caught the look, interpreted it correctly, and smiled encouragingly. “It’s all right, Mr. Caruth,” he extenuated. “It’s all to the regular for a gent to have the nightmare when he goes to sleep in his chair. Just you go back to your rooms and take a dose of bromide and say your lay-me-downs, and neither of us’ll remember anything about this to-morrow. I’d start the elevator for you if I could, but I can’t, so it’s you for the glue-foot climb.”

Caruth scarcely heard the man. His first spasm of distrust in his own action had quickly passed, and by the time the other had finished he had gone back to his first idea.

“Nonsense, Jackson!” he burst out impatiently. “I haven’t been asleep. Wilkins has fled within five minutes. If he hasn’t passed you, he must have gone some other way. How else could he go? Quick, man! He must be caught.”

But the watchman refused to be hurried. “There ain’t no way out but this,” he declared, “unless he done a high dive from the fire-escape.”

Caruth started. He had forgotten the dangerous combination of open platforms and loose-hung ladders plastered across the hall windows on each floor. If Wilkins had taken that means of escape, as was entirely probable, he must be well out of reach, and no way to find him would remain except the slow appeal to the police. He would call up the headquarters and——

Suddenly he recalled his visitor. Would she care to have the affair made public? Certainly he could not act without consulting her.

The watchman’s voice broke on him. That individual had switched on the lights in the hall, and had gone back to where a closed door gave on an alley. “We’ll take a look at that Jacob’s ladder just to satisfy you, Mr. Caruth,” he called. “See here!” He threw open the door and let Caruth step out into the night.

At first the alley seemed dark, but soon objects began to stand out in the faint light. First the skyline showed, clear against the towering sides of the chasm, then the iron of the fire-escape disentangled itself from the darkness and began to show in rectangular tracery.

Before Caruth could distinguish more, the watchman uttered an exclamation. “By George!” he cried. “Somebody has been on that escape. It’s been let down.”

Caruth looked where the other pointed. Plainly discernible now to his distended pupils, the lowest stretch of the iron ladder trailed across his field of vision. Some one had cut loose the fastenings that held it high in the air, out of reach of casual sneak thieves, and had lowered it to the ground.

Wilkins’s selection of a route was obvious. But it was also obvious that he was gone.

Caruth turned disconsolately away. He was beginning to wonder what had become of Miss Fitzhugh. When he had started down the stairs, she had been close behind him, and he had expected her to follow, but though more than time enough for her to reach the bottom had elapsed, she had not appeared. His first thought was that she had remained above out of some belated care for her reputation. Then, quickly following, came the possibility of a more sinister explanation.

The incidents of the night to his mind admitted but one explanation. Despite her American name (which might well have been assumed) the girl was a Russian, and he who says Russia nowadays connotes revolution, plots, arrests, and all the rest of the melodrama. The girl might be a nihilist or she might be a police spy, but he was sure that she must be one or the other. And Wilkins was her enemy. She had recognized him as such—not at first, but toward the end, when he had tricked her by his feint of throwing the letter in the fire. Caruth remembered her every word. And he had left her alone! How did he know that Wilkins had gone? How did he know that he had not concealed himself and waited——

Slow and long-drawn-out when written down, the sequence of events with all its possibilities flashed like lightning through his mind. His hair rose upon his head, and the sweat stood out upon his forehead. His heart thumped furiously! Scarcely could he comprehend the words of the watchman.

Yet that individual was cursing roundly. “I’d like to know who in h——’s setting leaky pots out on that escape,” he finished. “Dropping stuff on a man’s clothes and spoilin’——”

The voice died away in an inarticulate murmur, and Caruth saw the man’s face blanch as he held out his hand. “It’s blood,” he hissed. “Blood! Blood! Somebody’s bleedin’ like a stuck pig up there. Somebody’s been murdered.” He ran down the hall and pressed the button of a police call. Then he came hurrying back.

“Here; you!” he shouted, his respectful manner falling from him like a garment. “Chase up them steps to the third floor and meet me at the window. On your way, now, Willie!”

Caruth came out of his trance and sped up the main stairway as the watchman ran up the fire-escape. One flight—two flights—three flights! Along the hall he rushed and threw open the window, just as the watchman reached it from below.

The electric lights threw a white glare upon the grating and upon a human form huddled across it in a strange, unnatural shape. The light fell upon the livid face and staring eyes and upon the dark spot that marred the whiteness of the open shirt bosom. Caruth drew his breath sobbingly. For the body was not that which he had feared to see.

The watchman bent and peered into the white face. “It’s Wilkins, all right,” he commented. “He didn’t get far with that eighteen hundred of yours. Somebody must have been laying for him. They’ve turned his pockets inside out, and I guess they got it, all right.” Deftly he ran his hand over the body.

“Nothin’ doing,” he reported. “They’ve skinned him clean. Here, Mr. Caruth! The cops’ll be here in a minute. I wish you’d chase down and put ’em wise.”

Caruth obeyed as he would have obeyed any behest of the stronger will. The situation had dazed him. An immense relief mingled with an immense terror; relief that his worst fears had not been realized; terror lest something even worse had happened in its stead. Wilkins was dead; presumably the woman still lived. But whose hand had struck the blow?

A swish of silk sounded in his ears, and he looked up. She was there before him, peering downward with curious, frightened eyes.

“Mr. Caruth,” she called, in hushed tones. “Mr. Caruth! Has anything happened?”

“Yes!” Relief was in his voice. Her bearing was not that of a murderess.

“What is it?”

“I have no time to tell you. You must go. The police are coming, and you must not be seen. Hurry!”

The unsolved mystery of the girl’s visit had grown blacker than ever, but Caruth did not hesitate. He knew that it was his duty to detain her till the fire-escape had given up its secret, but not for a moment did he pause. He refused to think of what it all meant. He only knew that he was on her side, heart and soul, and would do her bidding till he died.

“Hurry,” he repeated. “There isn’t a moment to lose.”

But the girl held back. “The letter,” she pleaded. “I cannot go without it.”

“You must. I didn’t want to tell you, but—Wilkins has been murdered, and the police are coming. The letter is out of reach, for the moment anyhow. You must go at once. The police will be here in a moment.” He hurried her to the door and peered out. Bare and silent in the first break of dawn, the street stretched interminably away. No human being seemed to stir. But as he listened a far-away rumble grew on his ears.

“The patrol wagon!” he gasped. “This way! Quick! God help you!”

In an instant she was gone, hurrying swiftly down the street, with steps that did not falter. Caruth watched till he saw a man’s figure step from the shadows to join her, and the two vanish around a corner. Then, sick at heart, as only the young can be when they find their heart’s idol clay, he turned back to greet the police. They were at his elbow—six of them—leaping from a wagon and hurrying forward. “What’s doing?” demanded the foremost.

“Murder! On the third-floor fire-escape. The watchman is there.”

The officer spun round. “On your way, boys!” he ordered. “Front and back!” He turned to Caruth. “Who did it?” he demanded.

If the young man hesitated, it was only for an instant. “I don’t know,” he answered. “It’s my valet. He robbed me and fled. I discovered it a moment later, and started after him. He had disappeared. The watchman found his body. His pockets were empty. Some confederate must have been waiting for him.”

The two men were alone in the hall. The other officers had all vanished, some through the rear entrance; some up the stairs. The crowd that was to come had not yet gathered, though the sound of running footsteps outside showed that its first units were coming, attracted by the clatter of the patrol.

The officer, used to scenes of excitement, and knowing the importance of ideas expressed before those in touch with tragedy had time consciously or unconsciously to mould their opinions, waited to ask one more question before he too hurried to the rear.

“Suspect anybody?” he demanded. “Seen anybody suspicious?”

Caruth looked him straight in the face. “No,” he lied. “No, I’ve seen nobody. As I said, the man robbed me, and I suppose some confederate killed him for his booty.”

When the officer had gone, Caruth turned and with leaden feet climbed the weary stairs that led to his room. He did not stop at the third floor, nor go again to inspect the lump of pallid flesh that alone remained of his servant. In fact, for the time he had altogether forgotten Wilkins. The murder had driven the murdered man from his mind.

He had answered the officer on the spur of the moment, thinking only to shield the girl, and not considering the possible—yes, the inevitable—consequences. The words once said, he would have given worlds to recall them, and yet he knew that he would only have reiterated them, if given the chance.

He would have no such chance, however. The true tale of the night’s events would have been preposterous enough at best. He could fancy how a hard-headed American jury would have listened to it, and how even a fourth-rate lawyer would have proved its impossibility. But, at all events, in telling it, he would have been telling the truth, and would have had the consciousness of rectitude to support him.

But his hasty answer had made the truth impossible, and he must go on piling lie upon lie in sickening iteration. Liars need good memories; would his prove equal to the task? Would no one catch him tripping? His answer had made him a criminal in the eyes of the law—an accessory after the fact. The thought sickened him; and yet mingled with his dismay was a fierce joy that he was doing it for her sake—for the sake of the woman who had walked into his life a few moments before; a woman of whose status and probably of whose real name he was ignorant.

Why had he done it, he asked himself with dazed wonder. He owed her nothing. She had forced herself on him, had cajoled him, and had finally fled, leaving him to bear the brunt of her crime—hers or her accomplices. He had done all she asked, had aided her meekly, and at the end had placed himself in shameful jeopardy without even being asked to do so. Harshly he laughed as he thought of it.

Then he threw out his hands. “There’s no use in thinking,” he muttered. “I’m a fool—but it’s stronger than I am. I must go on to the end—and lie and lie and lie.”

CHAPTER FIVE

AFTER all, matters went off very quietly. The murder of James Wilkins caused a surprisingly small sensation. Circumstances were against it. A prominent statesman had just denounced another prominent statesman for having accepted the tainted money of a wicked trust, and the accused statesman was calling heaven and earth as witness to his innocence; the champion heavyweight pugilist of the country had just given way to a new champion; and the Black Hand had blown up a restaurant whose proprietor had defied it. The papers had little space left for a plain case of robbery and murder, such as that of Wilkins seemed to be.

Caruth had told a straight story, which had been accepted at its face value. According to him, he had come home late and had sat down to smoke before going to bed. He had laid some money—about eighteen hundred dollars in bills—on the table beside him. Wilkins had been moving about and had seen the money and after a moment had left the room. When Caruth looked for the money an instant later it had disappeared. He had hurried downstairs in hope of catching the man, and with the aid of the night watchman had found his body. On looking up the references Wilkins had brought him, he had found that they were forged. He suspected, therefore, that the man had entered his service with sinister intent, and had been murdered by a confederate who had come to join him in the robbery.

The recital of this combination of fact and fancy gave Caruth no compunctions so far as Wilkins was concerned; the man’s references really were forged, and he had really stolen the money, by whatever particular name the law might label his act.

To Caruth, this tale seemed very lame, but, to his astonishment, no one questioned it. So utterly was this the case that it irritated him; it seemed to him extraordinary that the actual sequence of events could have happened without in some way impressing itself on the intelligence of every one who came within reach of it. He did not want to be suspected, yet the lack of detective ability on the part of the police angered him. Why this should be so, let psychologists explain.

The money borrowed from him by the so-called Miss Fitzhugh had been returned the afternoon after the crime in the form of a money-order sent by mail, about as clever a way of combining safety in transmission with concealment of the sender as could well be contrived. Clearly she did not desire to continue the acquaintance.

Caruth did! For several days he carefully abstained from any search, fearing that to do so might excite suspicion, but after a week had passed and Wilkins seemed forgotten, he began to think it safe to start inquiries.

His search began at the steamship offices. He first examined the passenger list of the Latourette, the vessel on which Miss Fitzhugh had claimed to have arrived, and sought for her name, only to find that it was not there. Less hopefully, he examined the lists of the vessels sailing from New York during the week that had elapsed since the murder, only to find no trace of her. Finally something happened that determined him to enlist the aid of Joe Bristow, a newspaper man of his acquaintance.

Bristow was ship-news reporter of the Consolidated Press. His duties required him to remain at Quarantine so long as any steamship was likely to arrive there. Ordinarily he left for the city at five or six o’clock in the afternoon, but if one of the great liners reported itself by wireless as intending to make port that night, he had to remain to see what news and passengers she brought. Few steamships reached New York without being boarded by him, and few important visitors entered port without being interviewed by him. He, if any one, would be likely to know if anybody answering Miss Fitzhugh’s description had arrived recently.

Caruth, who knew him slightly as the occupant of a small apartment high up in the Chimneystack Building, took the first opportunity that afforded to accost him and to invite him into his apartment.

Bristow accepted readily, though a faint smile curved his lips, as if some secret idea were stirring in his mind. He did not know Caruth very well, though he had frequently passed the time of day with him, and he had never before been asked to join the young fellow. Newspaper men are apt to grow cynical, and Bristow had learned to suspect the motives of those who sought him out.

Caruth led his guest to his den, and placed the decanters before him. Then, through the wreaths of tobacco smoke, he put his question, leading up to it with what he believed to be commendable astuteness.

Bristow listened quietly; then he answered one question with another. “The Latourette?” he repeated. “Yes; she arrived at eight o’clock on the night of March 5. Her mails and two of her passengers were brought up to the city on the mail tug. Let’s see—that was the night your valet was murdered, wasn’t it?”

Caruth blenched slightly. The reporter’s inquiry was probably only casual, but it might easily be otherwise. Perhaps he had erred in consulting this keen-faced newspaper man. However, there was nothing to do but to go on.

“Yes,” he answered steadily; “it was the same night.”

Bristow nodded. “I saw the lady,” he stated reflectively. “She was a looker all right. She had deep violet eyes and dark hair with a glint in it. She spoke English perfectly, but there was something foreign about her.” He paused and knocked the ash from his cigar. “I came up on the tug with her,” he added casually.

“Yes? And her name? I—I—have reasons for wanting to know.”

Bristow smiled inscrutably. “I don’t doubt you have,” he answered drily, “and, as it happens, I can probably give you some information. The question is whether I shall do it.”

Caruth colored. “I don’t understand you, Mr. Bristow,” he syllabled anxiously.

“Probably not. I will try to explain.” The reporter tossed his cigar into the fire and leaned back in his chair. “Isn’t it curious how things fit in together?” he began reflectively. “Life is a mosaic made up of hundreds of separate facts. Each belongs in one place and only in one. Until rightly fitted, the whole is an unintelligible jumble. But when fitted, we see that they are all parts of one design. I am interested in Russia and Russians. My work has compelled me to be; some of the best ‘stories’ I have gotten for the Consolidated Press have had to do with Russia. I am well acquainted in the Russian colony here. Professor Shishkin, the distinguished Russian scientist, is a great friend of mine. I’m telling you this so that you may understand why I was interested in this woman—this Russian woman, for she was Russian—about whom you are inquiring. My interest did not decrease when she took a cab at the Battery and told the cabman to drive her to this building.”

Caruth gasped, but said nothing.

“When I returned home after midnight,” went on the reporter, “the elevator had stopped running, and I had to walk up the stairs. Your door was ajar. As I passed it I distinctly heard a woman’s voice—and yours. It was none of my business, and I went on upstairs and to bed. The next morning I heard about your valet’s murder, and noticed that you said nothing about a visitor in your flat. Yet a woman must have been there when your man fled; in fact, I suspect that he had left your door open in his flight only a moment before I passed up the stairs. Your inquiry seems to bring all these facts into a somewhat curious consonance.”

Caruth was breathing hard. “Well?” he asked. “What are you going to do about it?”

The reporter hesitated. “I don’t know,” he answered at last, frankly. “It all depends! But I want you to understand one thing, Mr. Caruth: I am not a police reporter nor a yellow sensation reporter. My duty to the Consolidated Press does not call on me to solve murder mysteries, nor to pry into scandals. I don’t know you very well, nor what you are capable of doing at a pinch. For the matter of that, nobody does know what a man is capable of—not even himself. I’ve seen too many unexpected manifestations of virtue and of crime to judge lightly. That is why I have kept silent, though I knew you were holding back something about this murder. I don’t think to-night’s developments will lead me to change my course, though I cannot be certain. If you have any explanation to make, I shall be glad to hear it. I shall not make a newspaper story out of it, and I shall not repeat it without grave cause. More than this I cannot promise.”

Caruth did not answer for a moment. His thoughts whirled, unsettled as dry leaves in an October blast. His secret, it seemed, was not his secret at all—had never been his secret. From the first, this newspaper man had been able to shatter his glib story by a word, and had refrained from doing so. How many others possessed the same potentiality for mischief? Abruptly he threw away his cigar.

“I’ll tell you the whole story,” he declared. “I don’t know whether you’ll believe it or not. Probably I shouldn’t believe it myself if any one else told it to me. It seems too preposterous to talk about plots and terrorists and all that here in New York.”

“Not at all,” Bristow smiled. “New York is a hot-bed of plots. Probably nine-tenths of all the political plots in the world are hatched here and hereabouts. Just consider a moment! Anybody can plot in this country in perfect safety; and there are plenty of plotters handy. Is it a Russian plot? New York is the second largest Russian city in the world. It has thousands upon thousands of dwellers who have been driven out of Russia at the blow of the knout. Is it a German one? Berlin is the only city in the world holding more Germans than New York. Is it an Italian one? There are more Italians in and around New York than there are in Rome. Plots? Why, New York reeks with plots and plotters! Men lay their schemes, raise their funds, choose their emissaries, and a month or so later something happens in Europe—it may be the murder of a king. But it started here, beneath our noses.”

“But if there are so many plots, why are there so few results? We seldom hear——”

“Because if plotters are safe here, so are spies. Every European Government maintains an army of spies in this country. Every assemblage of plotters has one or more traitors in the pay of those who are menaced. It’s as broad as it’s long. But go on with your story. I only wanted to assure you that it will have to be a very remarkable case of plotting to surprise me.”

Caruth plunged in. “When I came home that night,” he began, “she was waiting for me. I had never seen her before. She said she was a Russian—the daughter of a Russian man and an American woman. She gave me a name, but it was probably assumed. She wanted a letter that had been mailed to me in Stockholm ten days before—by mistake, she said. It enclosed another letter that had been picked up in a bottle floating in the Baltic. The address of this second letter was partly illegible, but it was directed in my care and was sent to me accordingly. She said the letter belonged of right to her friends. While she was speaking the letter arrived—by special delivery. It seemed to be as she had stated. I was about to surrender it to her when my man, Wilkins, claimed it. More, he proved his claim. I gave him the letter. She tried to buy it from him—offered eighteen hundred dollars cash for it. Wilkins refused. Then she threatened him. Said she asked him to surrender it for his own sake; that he would be killed if he once read it; that she could not save him. Of course this smacked of revolution, nihilism, terrorism. Wilkins appeared to be frightened. He agreed to surrender the letter. He laid it on the table, took the money, and went out. Three minutes later we discovered that he had substituted blank paper for the letter. I ran after him and found him dead. The girl left just before the police came.”

“And you concealed the fact that she had been here. Why?”

Caruth colored. “It—it isn’t a thing that one tells to just any one,” he stammered. “But—well, I suppose it sounds foolish to you, but—I love her.”

The reporter did not smile. “Foolish?” he echoed gently. “Why foolish? Love is not foolishness. It’s madness, perhaps, but not foolishness. Good Heavens! Do you think one can be a newspaper man and see daily the broad trail of joy and sorrow, blood, death, ruin, happiness, rapture, and all the rest of it that love marks athwart the path of human life, and think it foolishness? Why, man, love means life! It means the preservation of the race! It means evolution! It is the one great primal passion! No, Mr. Caruth; never expect a newspaper man to laugh at love. He has seen too much of it. Of course I knew that must be your reason for screening the woman. But do you think she killed him?”

Caruth shook his head emphatically. “No!” he declared. “No!”

“Why not?”

“She couldn’t.” The young fellow leaned forward. “She couldn’t,” he declared eagerly. “See here: Wilkins took the money and fled. He knew we would be after him in a moment. He would not have delayed. He must have been out on that fire-escape and down to the place where he was killed before I left the room. This is the eighth floor; he was found on the third. He must have gone there by himself. No one could have carried his body there—not possibly! And it is preposterous to suppose that he went down to the third floor and waited there for her to overtake and murder him. No! She didn’t do it! She couldn’t have done it.”

“An accomplice?”

Caruth threw up his hands. “Very likely,” he groaned. “And yet how could an accomplice know that Wilkins had gotten away with the letter before she knew it herself? For he was probably dead when she did discover it. If not, he must have been killed within a very few seconds afterwards. She made no signal; she had no reason to make any. How could an accomplice know?”

“Let’s see!” Bristow looked around the room. “You were sitting in here, were you not?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Of course you were. My dear fellow, can’t you really answer your own question?”

Caruth shook his head hopelessly. “I’ve thought and thought,” he declared, “but I don’t progress an inch. Can you answer it?”

“Of course! Look through the sliding doors behind you. What is that thing that cuts across the upper left-hand corner of the window at the back?”

Caruth looked, then rose to his feet. Chagrin was pictured on his features. “Do you know,” he admitted disgustedly, “I never thought of that before? I never realized that that infernal fire-escape crossed my window. There is such a little piece of it that——”

“There is quite enough to permit a man to peer into your rooms. No doubt the murderer was watching there, and when Wilkins tried to escape by that route he found death awaiting him.”

“But—but—how did the spy know that Wilkins had changed the letters?”

“Perhaps he didn’t know it. Perhaps he was a mere thief who killed for money; or perhaps he saw the shift which was made too deftly for you to notice; or perhaps the girl signalled him.”

Caruth protested. “She couldn’t, I tell you!” he cried. “The time element——”

“Oh, I don’t think she did. I am merely citing possibilities. I don’t think she did, and I am free to admit that I really believe that Wilkins got only what he was fishing for. He was clearly a thief, and he seems to have been playing a dangerous game and to have lost out. I certainly do not feel called upon to take any steps to avenge him. But the girl is a different matter. You want to find her. Why?”

“I told you. Because I love her.”

“I understand that. But what then? You can’t possibly marry her!”

Caruth flushed. He looked very boyish to the reporter, who, scarcely older in years, was infinitely his senior in man-making experiences and responsibilities. Boyish, Caruth was without doubt, but American boys possess possibilities of rapid development that amaze the older people of the globe.

“Can’t I?” he answered, between his teeth. “Perhaps not. But if she is free, I mean to try. Anyhow, I must see her. I must. You said you might be able to help me!” he finished, with a boyish appeal in his voice.

The reporter rose and took up his hat. “I can give you some information,” he admitted. “Whether it will help you, is another question. You have been assuming, I believe, that the lady is a nihilist, or terrorist, or whatever they may call themselves?”

“Yes. Is she not?”

“God knows! She may be. On the other hand she may be an agent of the Russian Government, or she may be playing for her own hand. Europe breeds plenty of men and women—aristocrats to their finger-tips—who are driven by poverty to shady ways. Until the bloom is rubbed off, they are the most dangerous rogues living, bearers of proud names, masters of every social grace, apparently with everything to commend them, and yet rotten to the core. Europeans spot them and weed them out after a while, but we Americans are always fair game. I don’t say your Miss Fitzhugh is one of these—but she may be. An angel face is often part of a stock in trade. Be wise, Mr. Caruth. This woman has taken herself out of your life. Let her go!”

But the young fellow shook his head. “I won’t believe any evil of her,” he muttered, “and, any way, I must find her.”

The reporter shrugged his shoulders. “Oh, very well, then,” he said. “You’re old enough to decide for yourself. You will find her at the Women’s Hotel. She is staying there.”

CHAPTER SIX

THE event that had driven Caruth to seek Bristow’s aid was the appearance of a man who called himself Tom Wilkins and claimed to be a brother of the deceased valet.

Tom Wilkins was a tall, well built, red-faced individual with a projecting chin and small, sharp eyes. He bore a general resemblance to his brother James, but his eyes had a fiery gleam that Caruth had never noticed in those of his late valet. Perhaps the difference came by nature and perhaps by training; or perhaps there was no difference, the valet having merely hidden his soul behind discreetly down-dropped lids. Since he had played the trick that had led to his death, Caruth had been very uncertain as to his real character.

But he was in little doubt concerning that of Tom Wilkins. The man, he decided almost at first glance, was distinctly dangerous. Years of life in the West had rubbed away any smugness that might have characterized him in early life, and had made him bold and aggressive. The quickly arising necessities of the frontier had developed him, implanting or improving the power of quick decision and action, until it was almost automatic. Caruth had never known a Western “bad man,” but he felt instinctively that Tom Wilkins would fall into that category.

On his first visit to the Chimneystack Building Wilkins had said little to Caruth, but that little had been calculated to disturb the younger man, and to show him how thin was the ice over which he was skating.

“There ain’t been no special affectation lost between me and Jim,” he declared. “I ain’t laid eyes on him for years. Jim stayed here in the effete East and played the human doormat; I went West and played pretty nearly everything and everybody in reach. Once in so often I’d hear of a chance in stocks or horses or something that Jim could use, and I’d put him wise about it. Now and then Jim would learn of something that I could use, and he’d put me wise. Jim cat-footed through life, and I bulled through it. We played into each other’s hands reasonable well.”

“Yes?”

“Yes! I got sort of tired last month, an’ made up my mind to emigrate. I had a bunch of sheep over on the Gunnison that I’d been herdin’, and I was yearning for the company of something that wouldn’t say baa whenever you addressed ’em. Playing collie to a bunch of muttons ain’t what it used to was when shepherds carried crooks and wore loose effects, and I found it mighty monumentous and unsatiated, so I shakes the job and lines out for Denver, and there I finds a letter from Jim telling me to come to New York P. D. Q. So I comes, and gets here to find he got croaked just about the time his essay was postmarked. How about it?”

As gently as he could, Caruth repeated the gist of his tale concerning the theft of the money and the murder. It was a somewhat delicate matter to tell this violent-looking individual that his brother was a thief, and Caruth stumbled more or less over the details.

Wilkins, however, did not seem worried. “I never thought Jim would go into the hold-up business,” he commented, “especially for a measly one thousand eight hundred dollars. Maybe you don’t know it, but Jim was gettin’ tolerable plethoric. He was mighty saving and propinquous, Jim was; and he had some property out West—maybe ten thousand dollars’ worth. I’m his heir, and as I ain’t been in no ways intimidated with him, of course I ain’t inconsolable about his decease, nor I ain’t pretendin’ to be. But this hold-up story don’t explain none about that letter from Bill that he sent me.”

Caruth’s heart stopped for an instant; then raced madly. “What letter?” he questioned, as calmly as he could.

“This one.” Wilkins drew a paper from his pocket. “Jim enclosed it with a note of his own. He says: ‘Come at once. Millions in sight, but mighty dangerous. Bill’s letter explains.’ Bill’s letter is monumentous—mighty monumentous; but it ain’t to say illuminatin’. Maybe Jim forgot to send the key. I ’spose you don’t know anything about it?”

Caruth thought for a moment. To cover his pause, he poured out a drink and shoved the bottle across to Wilkins, who promptly followed his example.

“Perhaps I do,” he said at last. “About an hour before your brother’s flight, a special delivery letter arrived here from some place in Europe. It was addressed to me, but when I opened it, I found it enclosed another, stained and rumpled, which was addressed in my care. The name of the person for whom it was intended had been washed out. Your brother saw it and claimed it was for him. He asked me to open it and see if it was not addressed to ‘Jim’ and signed ‘Bill.’ I found that it was, and gave it to him. Perhaps that is the letter he sent you.”

“I reckon it is. And you don’t know nothing more about it? I don’t ’spose Jim showed it to you. But he might have intimidated something about it. You don’t know nothin’ at all?” Plainly the Westerner was disappointed.

“Nothing.”

“Well, I’ll tell you unequivalent, Mr. Caruth! I don’t believe Jim robbed you none. Jim warn’t a damn fool; none whatever! An’ nobody but a damn fool would rustle that money the way you think he did. I’m apostrophizing that the same parties stole it that did for Jim. An’ I’ve got an idea they croaked him to get this here crypto cable. I’m gamblin’ that it’s worth a good deal more’n any eighteen hundred dollars, if a man could only elusivate it. Sure you don’t know nothin’ more about it?”

“No!” Caruth’s lips were dry and his tones were not convincing.

The big plainsman studied him for a moment. “Well,” he said, “I’ve told you how I feel. Jim’s dead, and I don’t say I’d go out of my way to envenom him. But I do say that I want some light on this missive, and I’m going to have it. And if anybody gets hurt in consequence of my sloshing around, it won’t be my fault. You said you didn’t know no more about it, didn’t you?”

Caruth jumped up, white but vicious looking. “That’s the third time you’ve asked me that,” he exploded. “Do you mean to insinuate——”

“Not at all! Not the least bit in the world. I’m just theologizing. You’ve treated me square, and I ain’t dangerous to nobody who does that. But I’m exacerbated over that letter. I wouldn’t mind doing the ingenuous thing by anybody that helped me to guess it.”

The frown faded from Caruth’s face, and an expression of thought took its place. “I’m too much in the dark to help you much,” he parried.

Without the least hesitation the plainsman thrust forward the letter. “Maybe this’ll help you,” he suggested. “This here is a copy. I’ve got the aboriginal cached where it’ll be safe. But this is all to the accurate except that it’s got two or three names of places left out. I ain’t givin’ the whole thing away, you understand.”

Caruth took the letter with a hand that trembled in spite of himself. He did not want to read it; to do so seemed a sort of dishonor—a lack of consideration for the desires of Miss Fitzhugh. On the other hand, it would be madness to let slip what might very well be his only chance to acquaint himself with a letter she had bought and paid for and with facts that might spell life and death to him and to her.

His uncertainty must have showed in his face, for the other encouraged him. “Go ’long!” he said. “Read it. It won’t bite none.”

Caruth opened the letter. It read as follows:

Dear Jim:

There’s been a fight and everybody on board is dead or dying. The Orkney is sinking, and we’re all due to drown if we live long enough. It was the gold. A million pounds and more. Petroff told us about it, and we jumped the officers. They fought hard, but we worried ’em down. Then the second mate fired the magazine. Petroff and I are fixing a bottle. We are in the * * * between * * * Get the gold if you can. No more from

Your Brother

Bill.

Caruth’s hands dropped, and he looked up. His cheeks were white. So this was the explanation? The girl’s quest was for gold. The letter she sought contained, not the names of revolutionists, as he had inferred, but information as to the whereabouts of gold that seemed already to have cost many men their lives. It all seemed very sordid to Caruth. He had never earned or lacked a penny in his life, and to struggle for mere money seemed to him little short of disgraceful. It speaks volumes for the impression Marie Fitzhugh had made upon him that it never even occurred to him to misdoubt her interest in the matter, or to question whether she might not be a mere adventuress, the tool of private thieves rather than the agent of public conspirators. Perhaps, after all, this was because he was tenacious of his beliefs, and, once having formed them, did not readily change.

One thing, however, stood out in his consciousness: He must discover her whereabouts and tell her that her letter had been found. He had no qualms in regard to Wilkins. The man had forced his confidence upon him, and he was under no obligation to preserve it. Miss Fitzhugh owned the letter. She had bought it from its owner and had paid for it, and was entitled to know its contents. His part was to find out if she still wanted it, and to make sure that the man who held it would be available if she did.

He turned to Wilkins, who had waited patiently for him to speak. “I can’t help you off-hand,” he declared, “but perhaps I may be able to do so later. Perhaps I can trace that letter. I don’t know whether I can or not, but I will try. Certainly I can learn something about the wreck of the Orkney, and that ought to help. Your brother’s room is vacant. Suppose you occupy it to-night, and meanwhile I will see what I can learn. And if I were you, I should keep that letter to myself.”

The man’s lips curled contemptuously. “Don’t you worry about me none!” he responded grimly. “I ain’t takin’ no chances. I’ve had time to arrange things. Do you know what would eventuate if I didn’t show up for such and such a time? Well, I’ll tell you. Copies of this here letter would go to half a dozen newspapers mucho pronto. An’ I judge that would queer the game some for the folks that did for Jim.”

It was this interview that had caused Caruth to consult Bristow and to tell that clever newspaper man a great deal more than he had dreamed of doing when he began, though, for some reason not entirely intelligible to himself, he did not touch on the arrival of the Westerner. It was the interview, too, that led him to the presence of his charmer.

CHAPTER SEVEN

THE WOMEN’S HOTEL of New York is sacred to the unattended woman. The clerks and the cooks are women; women wait on the tables; and women convey characteristically feminine trunks to virgin apartments. No man, attended or unattended, may spread his name upon its register, or settle himself within its sacrosanct precincts. Scarcely may he win permission to wait in a parlor while a feminine bell-hop carries his card to the arcana above.

In this parlor Caruth awaited an answer to his call. Fearing that a card alone might meet denial, he had inscribed it with the words “On most important business” before he sent it up.

He had the parlor to himself, and carefully he chose a position, partly screened by flowering plants, where he might hope to talk unheard and undisturbed by any one who might enter. What he had to say was not too pleasant, and he wanted no chance eavesdroppers.

He waited a long time—so long, in fact, that he began to fear that his note might be ineffective, and he was contemplating a further appeal and wondering, in the event that this too failed, how long he could roost on the steps of the opposite house watching for her to come out, without being arrested. For he was determined to see her.

But at last she came.

She wore an evening dress of some glittering material, rich and black. Her clear-cut profile and delicately arched eyebrows reminded him of a cameo or an old French miniature. Her shoulders, rising from a corsage of black velvet, gleamed like tinted marble in the soft lights of the hall. It seemed incredible that she and the girl of a week before could be the same. He bowed in silence, dumbly staring.

He was recalled to himself by her voice. “Well, sir,” she reminded him, “you have something to say to me? Have you forgotten your lines?”

Caruth shook his head. “No,” he answered slowly; “I had only forgotten my cue. I was thinking in the fifth act, while we are yet still in the first. However, you have helped me out. My lines are these: ‘Your letter has turned up. Wilkins’s brother called on me to-day with a copy of it.’”

If Caruth intended to startle the girl by his abrupt announcement, he undoubtedly succeeded. She grew so white that for a moment he feared she was about to faint. Then a sparkle came into her eyes.

“His brother?” she repeated. “The one who wrote the letter?”

“Oh, no, no! Another brother. One who has been living in the West for years. A typical Westerner.”

“How did it get into his hands?”

“I can only guess. Probably Wilkins really took your warning words to heart, for he scribbled a brief letter on an envelope, and mailed the whole, probably by the chute in the building. The postmark shows that the letter was collected about three A.M. that same morning. It went to Denver to the brother, whose name is Thomas. Thomas dropped everything and started east. He got here this morning and came to my rooms to see his brother. He had heard nothing of the fellow’s death.”

“And he showed you the letter? You have read it?” The tones were quiet, but Caruth could see the suspense lurking in her eyes.

“Yes, he showed it to me. That is, he showed me a copy of it—with certain words cut out. I have brought it with me. But before I show it to you, I must—forgive me—I must be convinced of your rights in the matter.”

“My rights!”

“Yes, your rights. It seems outrageous for me to question you; but—I must know.”

“Know what?” A tang of metal grated in the woman’s words.

“Know all there is to know! I have the right to ask! You came to my rooms seeking a letter. You warned Wilkins that the possession of the letter might be fatal to him. He did not heed you, and he was murdered within the hour, apparently to get the letter you wanted so much. To-day I learn that this letter contains information, not about a political conspiracy as I had supposed, but about money—money! I was ready to shield you—even when I thought you or your accomplices had been guilty of murder—as long as your acts were political. But to kill for money—to waylay a man and murder him for gold—that goes beyond me!”

“And you believe I did that?”

Caruth flushed and paled again. “No!” he stammered. “Not you. But your friends——”

“My friends are no more guilty than myself. Two of them were awaiting me, and I thought at first that they had killed your man. But they did not. I give you my word that they did not. Neither of them touched him! He was killed by some one else.”

“By whom? By whom?”

“Ah, God! I wish I knew!” The woman’s words were a sob. “Perhaps a chance garroter! Perhaps—perhaps my enemies! I thought I had eluded them. I thought they were ignorant that I was here. But perhaps they knew that I came to the city that night. Perhaps they followed me. Perhaps they killed him. I do not know! But it was done by no friends of mine.”

Caruth drew a long breath. “Thank God for that! But the money! The money! You threatened him with death unless he gave up the clue to it——”

“Stop!” The girl’s interjection was swift. “Stop, Mr. Caruth! I did not threaten him. I warned him. I belong to a great organization that is waging a desperate warfare for the rights of millions of human beings. We fight as we can. Think for a moment! You have been free so long—you and your English forebears—that you take your freedom as a right. But it did not come as a right. All of it, all of it, was bought for you at a price. Every forward step was forced. Every grant from Magna Charta down was wrested from the king. Thousands upon thousands of unknown men died that you might live in peace and freedom, undespoiled. For a thousand years the path has been drenched in blood. What right have you—you to whom freedom came with your first breath; you who have never known tyranny; you who can freely assemble and criticise and change your rulers—what right have you to rebuke us who are just starting on the same bloody road your fathers trod for you? Granted that some innocent lives are taken; granted that some excesses and outrages are perpetrated in the name of freedom; granted that some of us go too far and shock your moral sense. What of it? Think you your ancestors of a thousand or even a hundred years ago were always calm and self-contained? Think you they perpetrated no crimes when they had the power? The world has grown thin-skinned with prevailing peace, and shrinks aghast at primitive Russians struggling for primitive freedom with what weapons they can grasp. You do not approve our methods! Do you approve the government’s methods? For every innocent man whom the terrorists have slain, the Czar has slain a hundred and imprisoned a thousand. From the salt mines of the north, from the frozen steppes, from the purgatory of water-soaked dungeons, they cry to Heaven. That letter placed in our hands might have meant—may still mean—the end of all this. At least, it would hasten the day when all will end. We did not kill your valet. We do not know who did. But if we had, what is his life compared with the lives of millions?”

The girl’s eyes flashed; her voice came rich and strong; like a Judith she stood.

Caruth was awed; almost silenced.

“I do not understand,” he muttered.

“You shall! Although when I tell you I place my life in your hands. I will tell you the story of the Orkney. Then you may judge.”

The girl paused to take breath. “In March, two years ago,” she went on, “the steamship Orkney sailed from London for St. Petersburg with a million pounds sterling in gold on board. This gold, borrowed on the people’s credit, was to be used in crushing the people. We determined to capture it, or, if that could not be done, at least to prevent its reaching Russia. It belonged to the people; the Czar should not use it to enslave them.

“A war-ship had been sent to bring this gold, but at the last moment the bureaucrats discovered that we had gained over the men on board and that a mutiny was probable. Urgently as it needed the money, the Russian government dared not send it by that means. Nor did it dare to send it by rail. We had inspired a wholesome terror in the hearts of the ministers of the Czar. At last it hit on the idea of blackening the gold bars and shipping them on an ordinary steamer as pig lead to Kronstadt. A battalion of soldiers would go along, ostensibly as passengers. So swiftly was this decided on and carried out, we learned it only at the very last minute. Had it not been for a lucky chance, we should not have known it at all. But, as it happened, two of the soldiers were our men, and we managed to get orders to them to see that the gold should never reach its destination. If they could not throw it into our hands, they were to sink the vessel and prevent its reaching Russia.

“The Orkney sailed, going north through the Irish Sea, and around the north end of Scotland. The war-ship followed her out of the harbor and hung on her heels persistently, secretly convoying her. Moreover, Russian agents were watching all along the route. Our agents, so far as we could reach them, were also watching.

“Yet the Orkney disappeared. She passed Copenhagen and entered the Baltic. There on the first night, at one o’clock in the morning, when near the opening of the Gulf of Finland, less than three hundred miles from her destination, her lights went out. In vain the cruiser tried to find her; in vain the various observers strained their eyes. In the scant hours between one o’clock and daylight she vanished, gold, crew, vessel, all! Since then, though Russia has sought incessantly, she has learned nothing as to her fate. We are certain of this.

“We ourselves know a little—a very little—more. A fishing boat saw her passing the Upsula Islands going north into the Gulf of Bothnia. The news came to us and not to the Government.

“Except this, we knew nothing until two weeks ago. Then a friend sent us a bottle he had found floating in the Baltic. It contained a message from the dead. It told us how well our men had done their work. It said in brief that the writer and his friends had risen and attacked the officers. Bitter fighting had followed. The stokers, imprisoned below, kept the fires up and the ship moved slowly but steadily northward. A storm arose. Our men made a rush and gained control. But at the moment of victory one of the officers exploded some powder that was on board, and the ship began to sink. Nearly everybody was dead or dying by that time, and all that our agent could do was to drive the vessel ashore. Just before she sank he must have thrown overboard the bottle with his message. He had done his duty well and patriotically; his name will be honored when the Russian people come to their own.

“In one thing alone he failed. The part of his letter that told just where the Orkney sank was blotted out. We can infer only that she sank on the coast of Finland, the Russian side of the Gulf of Bothnia; that she is lying somewhere within a stretch of one hundred and fifty or at the most two hundred miles. She must have sunk intact without breaking up, for no wreckage has come ashore from her. Somewhere at the bottom of that water she is lying with her gold.”

Miss Fitzhugh paused. Her eyes were sparkling and her cheeks flushed. Thrilling as was her tale, Caruth came near not heeding it through looking at her. The charm of the teller nearly effaced the interest of the tale.

After a while the girl went on.

“And now, Mr. Caruth, you know all. I have put myself wholly in your hands. A word from you to the Russian authorities and I shall be an exile from my native land, proscribed, with a price on my head. If I go back and am caught, I shall rot in the dungeons of St. Peter and St. Paul. I am not afraid. I faced the risk when I entered on this work. I knew that sooner or later I must be caught; that permanent escape could come only from the advent of freedom before fate overtook me. I took the risk, and I will pay the penalty without whining if the need comes. But I wish to do something to aid my country before that time. Hitherto I have been able to do but little. I bear a great name. Fitzhugh is my mother’s name—not my father’s. I am reputed wealthy, but I have no real power over my money. My fortune is in the hands of a guardian who is loyal to the Czar, and who watches me narrowly. In his grip I am held powerless. I am only a woman. I cannot fight with my hands. I can only use my wits. You reproach me because I am contending for gold. Can you conceive what this gold will do for our cause? What a mighty lever it will be in our hands? For we are poor—poor! If I can put this money in the hands of the Brotherhood, I shall have done more than I ever hoped to do. Then let the bureaucrats lay me by the heels and I will laugh in their faces, content to die.”

Abruptly the girl stopped; and then went on with an entire change of tone. “Now, Mr. Caruth,” she said, “you know all. What will you do? Will you betray me or aid me? Choose!”

The girl’s breath came fast between her parted lips. Her eyes shone starlike. Her bosom rose and fell tumultuously. “What will you do?” she demanded. “Choose!”

Caruth’s face glowed. “Do!” he cried. “Is there anything I will not do? I did not know that women such as you lived. I am wholly in your hands. Ask of me what you will: Money—risk—life—anything! In life and in death I am yours!”

Passionately he stretched out his arms and drew the girl forward. She swayed toward him and for an instant he held her against his madly beating heart. “I love you!” he cried. “I love you! I love you!”

It was for an instant only, for, with a strength of which he had not thought her capable, the girl tore herself free.

“For shame!” she gasped. “For shame!”

Caruth made no attempt to move.

“Why ‘for shame’?” he questioned. “I love you. I have loved you from the first moment I saw you. Within an hour from that first moment I lied for you! I risked the electric chair for you! I did it willingly, gladly, without being asked. I would do it again! I love you! Miss Fitzhugh—Marie—will you be my wife?”

A curious expression came into the girl’s face. “What!” she demanded incredulously. “You would marry me? Me! The woman who came to your rooms at midnight? The woman whom you suspected of murder? The adventuress who plots for gold? You would marry me?”

“You and none other. Is it so strange? Many men must have loved you! Every one who saw you must have loved you.”

“But not under such circumstances as these. Mr. Caruth, all my life I shall be grateful to you. As long as I live, I shall remember your words. They will console me when my dark hour comes, as come it must for each of our Brotherhood. But I cannot accept. I am pledged to a cause which I cannot desert. No, Mr. Caruth! Go back to your safe and harmless American life and forget me. It would be ill requital for your kindness to draw you further into my fated existence.”

Caruth stretched out his hand and took hers. She did not resist, but her fingers lay cold in his and she shook her head slowly, smiling wanly. “No,” she breathed. “No.”

Caruth’s grasp did not slacken. “Why not?” he questioned. “This matter of the Orkney will not last forever. When it is over, you will have earned your freedom; you will have done a great work for your country. Then——”

The girl did not pretend to misunderstand him. “It cannot be,” she murmured, and there was a world of sadness in her tones.

“Why not? Is it because you don’t care for me?”

“No, not that!”

“Then——”

The girl flung up her arms. “Oh!” she cried. “Can’t you understand? I shall never marry, or, if I do, it will be at the behest of the Brotherhood. I shall marry some one who is helping to set Russia free. Perhaps—perhaps I may buy some part of her freedom with the only pawn I possess—myself. I am not free—I never will be free till Russia is.”

Caruth drew a long breath. “You mean to sell yourself?” he questioned gently.

The girl flushed redly. “It is for the people,” she pleaded.

“Then”—Caruth’s voice rang out—“then sell yourself to me. I can take risks as well as another. I am rich, young, strong. All that I have is at your service. Let me help. Tell me what to do, and it shall be done. I’ll drag this Orkney up from the sea. If you are for sale, let me bid! And if I pay the price—if I win back the gold from the sea—then let me claim my reward.”

But the girl shook her head. “I will not!” she cried. “I was wrong to let you become involved in this. But I did not know you then. Now that I do know you I shall not let you take chances such as these.”

“I take them very willingly.”

“Because you do not gauge them. Or no, I do not mean that—I believe you would take them even if you understood what you were facing. But it is not fair to let you.”

Caruth laughed. “I’m the best judge of that!” he declared. “Come, we won’t discuss it any more. I am going to help you, and that’s all there is to it.” Gently he raised the girl’s hand to his lips. “There!” he announced, as he released it. “It’s all settled. I won’t bother you about it any more till that gold is in our hands. Come, sit down, and tell me what you want me to do first.”

“But——”

“There are no buts. You want to know about this Wilkins who has turned up. Very well. I’ll tell you what I noticed, and you can ask questions.”

Before Caruth left the hotel that night, he had imparted to Miss Fitzhugh every detail concerning the plainsman that his quickened memory could supply. The man’s appearance, his language, history, desires, threats, and the precautions he had taken to secure his safety, had all been minutely depicted. Miss Fitzhugh possessed the rare power of making those she questioned recall particulars that had made almost no impression on them when they occurred. Just as a powerful developer brings out on a photographic plate once invisible details, so her interrogatories, acting on Caruth’s memory, quickened it and evolved details concerning Thomas Wilkins that the young man himself had not suspected that he possessed.

At the end the girl had dismissed him with instructions to bring the plainsman to call upon her the next day.

Caruth hesitated. “He seems to be a very sharp fellow,” he objected. “He put two and two together very quickly, and asked some questions that worried me. Undoubtedly he thinks my story fishy. And it is fishy. If he knows that you are involved in the case, he may become dangerous.”

The woman threw out her hands. “Don’t I know it?” she flamed. “But I’ve got to see him for myself. How do either you or I know that he is your valet’s brother? How do we know that he is not an agent of the man who killed your valet? Russia has many spies as improbable as he. Probably he is what he purports to be, but I must see him and judge for myself. And I must see that letter—the whole of it. There is no other way. Somebody must do the bargaining. No, I must see him. Do you know where to find him?”

“Certainly. He is asleep in his brother’s room at my apartment now.”

“Then have him ready at ten to-morrow morning. Be at the door of your building at the moment, neither too soon nor too late. A motor will pick you up and take you to a safe place where I will meet you.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

AS the clock struck ten the next morning, Caruth, with Tom Wilkins at his heels, stepped from the elevator in the Chimneystack Building and walked to the great entrance. Just as he reached it a red automobile drew up at the curb. Caruth motioned Wilkins into it, and jumped in behind him; and before he had time even to take his seat the machine was off. Caruth, glancing back expectantly, was somewhat surprised to see that his hasty departure had apparently roused no interest. The spies in attendance, if spies there were, either did not care to follow or recognized the hopelessness of attempting to do so.

After racing northward for several blocks, the motor turned into a side street, ran east past two or three streets, and, once more turning, sped downtown, finally stopping at the ladies’ entrance of one of the big Broadway hotels.

Caruth laughed to himself as he got out. Anything less like the mysterious Nihilistic rendezvous at which he had expected to land could scarcely be conceived. Still less excitement remained in the venture when, after sending up his card by a very matter-of-fact bell-boy, the two were shown into a parlor and allowed to wait for a very characteristically feminine interval.

If the plainsman felt out of place in surroundings which must have been wholly new to him, at least he did not show it. His face was as expressionless as a poker player’s, and he carried himself as if he owned the place, seemingly unconscious of his ill-fitting, ready-made clothing, and of the heavy boots that clattered loudly on the polished floors.

Caruth had told him little as to the object of their visit, merely saying that the lady on whom they were to call had something to say that might throw light on the object of his search. Wilkins had asked no questions. His small, furtive eyes had rested for a moment on the younger man’s face, and then he had nodded. “I’m your potato,” he remarked.

Miss Fitzhugh kept the two waiting for a time which seemed long to the plainsman, unused as he was to the intricacies of the feminine toilet. When she swept in at last, her appearance made both men catch their breath, Caruth not less than the unsophisticated Westerner.

Dressed entirely in black, high-throated, and with her hair arranged with severe plainness, she looked years older and more sedate than the magnificently vital creature Caruth had before seen. In her eyes lay a look of slumbering sorrow which persisted even when she smiled. Caruth, amazed, wondered what facet of her kaleidoscopic nature would manifest itself next.

But if her appearance bewildered Caruth, it absolutely overwhelmed Wilkins. He dropped his hat, stammered, and almost gasped at sight of her. When she gave him her hand, he seemed afraid to touch it.

But this phase passed. Miss Fitzhugh had a way with her—whether inborn or acquired it might be hard to guess—that was most effective in dealing with the opposite sex. Within ten minutes, Wilkins, his errand forgotten, was telling her a story of his experiences as a sheep-herder. “Yes, ma’am,” he wound up. “Muttons are all right when they’re served with mint sauce or when they’ve been cropped to furnish trouserings, but for steady company they’re about on the level of a Boston tea party. When you’ve watched ’em masticating daisies for a few spaces, you begin to yearn for something that don’t look like it had come out of a Noah’s ark.”

Miss Fitzhugh smiled sympathetically. “So when you got your brother’s letter, with its promise of millions, you were glad enough to hurry east,” she suggested. “You wanted some of the fleshpots of Egypt.”

Wilkins hesitated. “No’m,” he answered uncertainly. “I ain’t caring much about no foreign grub; chile con carne is good enough for me. But, of course, if there’s any chance of strikin’ a pocket and dredgin’ a million or so out of that ship, I’d like to do it. And, of course, I’d like to do up the fellows that did for Jim.”

Miss Fitzhugh stared at him questioningly. “There is a chance of doing it,” she answered meaningly; “but it isn’t as easy as you may suppose. You may have to fight for it.”

Wilkins’s right hand wandered back to his hip-pocket, reappearing with a huge revolver, while the other hand suddenly became possessed of a great knife. “I’m heeled,” he responded grimly.

Miss Fitzhugh showed no surprise. Deliberately she took the revolver from the plainsman’s hand and with practised fingers twirled the cylinder and drew back the hammer, smiling at the man’s warning exclamation. “I’m used to them,” she explained.

She handed back the weapon and went on. “Your brother’s ship was the Orkney, Mr. Wilkins. It sailed from Liverpool March 5, nearly two years ago, and was wrecked somewhere in the Baltic four days later. It had on board more than a million pounds sterling—nearly five million dollars. That money really belongs to me and my friends, though it is claimed by others who have been moving heaven and earth to get it. Your brother who wrote the letter had no right to any part of it. Your brother who was murdered had no right to it. You have no right to it. But we are very generous to our friends. It is really impossible that you should get this gold yourself. You will have to call either on us or on our enemies to help you. If your letter proves valuable and enables us to get it—to get our own money, mind you—we will share it with you.”

The plainsman’s eyes narrowed, and his mouth changed to a straight slit above his chin. For the first time Caruth noticed his likeness to the dead man. This was business, and accordingly Wilkins promptly relegated sentiment to the background. “How big a share?” he demanded roughly.

“Well——” Miss Fitzhugh hesitated. “First let me explain,” she went on at last. “The Orkney was wrecked in the Baltic Sea about three thousand miles from here. We shall have to charter a steamer and seek for her. Your letter may or may not enable us to find her. If we do find her, we will have to send down divers and bring the gold up—not a very easy task, I imagine. The search will have to be made secretly, for our foes are watchful and able. We may have to fight to save both the gold and ourselves after or before we get it on board. The whole trip will cost money—a great deal of money. It will strain our resources to the utmost—and it may come to nothing in the end. We need the money—need it desperately. Now, considering all this, what do you think will be a fair share for your aid?”

Wilkins considered. His small eyes wandered from Miss Fitzhugh to Caruth and back again, but his impassive face gave no clue to the thoughts that were passing in his mind. The others believed that he was calculating how large a share he could demand. Long afterwards, they suspected that his ideas had been very different.

“Well,” he declared, at last, “I don’t mean no officiousness. Maybe you’re givin’ it to me straight. But I reckon the other side would have about as good a yarn to tell, and maybe it would have more money to pay with. I guess this money don’t belong to either of you. If it did, you wouldn’t be so durned mysterious about it. I reckon you’re both out to steal it. But, h——l! that don’t make no difference to me. I’ll steal just as soon as any other hombre will, if he can steal enough to make it worth while and can get away with the goods. Now, let’s talk straight. Who are your fellows, any way?”

Miss Fitzhugh hesitated, but only for a moment. After all, it was better to tell this plain-spoken frontiersman what he wanted to know rather than to have him make inquiries that might perhaps come to the ears of the Russian government and lead to the betrayal of the whole plan. If he were really a traitor or a spy all was lost anyhow. He could ruin everything by telling what he already knew in the right quarter; he could do no worse if he knew more. Perhaps he might be forced to hold his tongue by fear, although this did not seem very probable. However, it was neck or nothing.

She leaned forward. “Did you ever hear of the Russian revolutionists, Mr. Wilkins?” she asked.

“Them fellows that are tryin’ to knock the Czar into the middle of a puddle duckski? Sure! They’re all right, if they’d only talk less like a seidlitz powder.”

“I am a member of the inner circle of the Brotherhood. This gold belongs to us. It was borrowed on our credit by the Russian Government. We tried to take it from them, and we succeeded, but lost it in the moment of success. We need it to help the cause of freedom—to get for our people the freedom that you have as a birthright. We are trying to get it back. Your letter may enable us to do so. Will you help us?”

Wilkins nodded. “I reckon so,” he responded. “What’ll they do to us if they catch us?”

“Do!” The girl laughed harshly. “I don’t know. Shoot us, hang us, drown us, or jail us for life. Are you afraid?”

“No’m! Not to say afraid. But I always like to know what I’m goin’ up against. Buckin’ the Czar looks to me a good deal like going against a phony faro game. But, thunder! I always was willing to take a sporting chance. I’ll go you for one-tenth of what we get. I guess that’s fair.”

Miss Fitzhugh nodded slowly. “That’s a good deal,” she remarked, “considering that we take all the risks. But I accept. One-tenth of all we recover shall be yours. You shall go with us and help us to get it, and you shall have your share. Here’s my hand on it.”

Awkwardly the plainsman took the smooth, slim fingers which she stretched out to him. “It’s a whack, ma’am,” he said.

“It’s a ‘whack’! But, Mr. Wilkins, there is something more that I want to say, and I want you to understand that I say it not as a threat, but simply as a warning. I don’t know how much you may know of our society, but it has representatives all over the world, and it does not tolerate traitors. No one who has ever betrayed it has lived long. If either you or Mr. Caruth here tried to play fast and loose with it, you might succeed for the moment, but it would be for a moment only. Your heirs might profit by your treachery, but you would not.”

Wilkins laughed. He seemed neither offended nor worried by the girl’s words. “Sure!” he answered cheerfully. “That’s understood. No gang can hold together or be successful unless they does for anybody that splits on ’em. I ain’t boastin’ none of my whiteness. Maybe I’d sell out if I thought it would pay me; but, naturally, I count myself some better than the State of New Jersey. I ain’t offerin’ myself for sale promiscuous desultory. And in this case it don’t look as if it would be altogether healthy to sell out. No! You can count on me as long as you play fair yourselves. Now, what’s the program?”

Miss Fitzhugh leaned back in her chair with an expression of relief on her face. “I believe you are truer than you say, Mr. Wilkins,” she murmured. “I’m going to trust you. As to the program, I must consider. The first thing is to let me look at that letter.”

“Sure!” Without hesitation, the plainsman handed over a folded sheet.

Miss Fitzhugh only glanced at it. “I mean the original,” she explained, with a steely glint in her eyes.

But Wilkins shook his head decidedly. “Not any,” he replied. “The aboriginal is safe, and I don’t show it to no one yet aways. It tells where the Orkney’s sunk, all right, and I’ll go with you and guide you till we get somewhere near. I’ve been lookin’ up the place on the map, and I can do it. Or I’ll tell you: I’ll show you the letter as soon as we get into the Baltic? How’ll that do?”

“It won’t do at all. The letter may be valueless, and——”

“It ain’t valueless. It tells, all right. It says ‘in a narrow strait between this island and that island.’ You needn’t worry about that part of it.”

The woman hesitated. Was all this a cunningly devised plot of the Czar’s agents or was the man honest? His refusal to disclose his secret was not unnatural, and yet——

“Mr. Wilkins,” she said slowly, “I’ll take your word for it, since I can do nothing else. But I warn you solemnly that if I fail in this thing after I have spent all the money that I shall have to spend, it will cost both you and me our lives. The Brotherhood will not tolerate such a costly failure as this would be. So beware.”

Wilkins nodded. “Shoot,” he said. “You’re faded.”

Miss Fitzhugh looked slightly bewildered. “Very well,” she said. “On your head be it. Now we must see about getting a ship.”

“A ship!” Caruth leaned forward. All through the conversation he had lain back in his chair, listening but not uttering a single word. The girl seemed entirely competent to manage things, and he felt no call to intervene, though he shivered once or twice when she spoke so openly to this plainsman, who frankly confessed that he was ready to play traitor for a sufficiently large reward. But his chance had come around at last.

“A ship!” he echoed. “Don’t worry about that. I have a thousand-ton yacht eating its head off down the bay. I’ll be delighted if you will use it as your own. When shall we sail?”

CHAPTER NINE

PROFESSOR SHISHKIN spent the next ten days after Maxime’s cataclysmal visit in worrying over what he had to do and in trying to devise some way of eluding at least that part of his orders that required him to take Olga with him. Knowing the methods of the Brotherhood, he guessed that, if need be, they would not hesitate to use the girl in accomplishing their ends, at whatever peril to her. On the other hand, he was resolved that she should never go back to Russia. But how to avoid the necessity he could not see. He worried himself sick over it.

He was in this state of mind when Marie Fitzhugh notified him by the long-distance telephone—for she did not wish to be seen in his company or at his house—to send the notice of his impending departure on Mr. Caruth’s yacht to the papers, and to be ready to sail in four days.

It was not difficult to get the announcement printed. The Professor’s scientific achievements, while they had never brought him wealth, had brought him the homage of the intellectual of all lands. He had even been discovered by the New York Sunday papers and had had his achievements attractively described in a syndicate letter written by a special writer, who criticised—and disproved—the Professor’s famous theory of rising sea-floors by the sole light of information derived from the books of the Professor himself.

In spite of this, the Professor was a friend to newspaper men, and was always willing to be interviewed on almost any subject connected with his work. So when he desired to give out the news of his coming trip, he had only to choose to which newspaper friend he would send it.

Finally he picked out Bristow, for much the same reasons that had led Caruth to consult that well-informed individual. He had first met the reporter on his arrival from a trip to Europe several years before, and had been attracted to him by the able and intelligent account which the reporter had printed concerning certain scientific discoveries he had made on his trip. This good impression was confirmed on several later occasions. Further, the reporter naturally occurred to him, because that young man had recently become a somewhat constant caller at the New Jersey cottage. (The Professor was slightly bewildered by his apparent assiduity in the pursuit of science, but did not suspect that his daughter might have something to do with it.) Further, as ship-news reporter for the Consolidated Press, Bristow was not only the exact man to handle such an item, but was best adapted to give it the wide publicity desired by its publication in the papers served by that great news organization.

Bristow put the item “on the wires,” and then hurried down to East Orange at the first possible moment. He did not, however, go straight to the Professor himself, but to that gentleman’s daughter. Moreover, he addressed her as Olga, from which it might be suspected that matters had progressed further than the Professor imagined.

“Olga,” he began, “this note—what does it mean?”

The girl glanced at the paper in his hand. “I don’t know,” she answered thoughtfully. “I don’t know.”

“But——”

“Ten days ago a young man came to see father. They talked together a long time. Father was a good deal excited; I could hear his voice away upstairs. Since then he has been ill. He cannot rest. He never laughs or even smiles. He has grown nervous and irritable. Always he is puzzling over something. He is killing himself. Yesterday he had me write you that note telling of his coming trip. I have begged him not to go, but he is quite determined. He says he wants to confirm his sea-floor theory.”

“But he is too old!”

“Of course! But he insists that he must go. Yet I don’t believe he wants to. I believe something or somebody is forcing him—though I don’t understand how any one can. Do you?”

Bristow looked thoughtful. Caruth’s association with the affair, as announced in the notice sent to the papers, caused him to conclude inevitably that the forthcoming trip had some connection with the arrival of the fair but mysterious Russian and with the murder of the valet. He could not quite understand the object, however, being ignorant of the Orkney and her fate, as well as of the recovery of the missing letter.

“How does Mr. Caruth come to be in this?” he asked abruptly, wondering what excuse had been offered for the young man’s sudden interest in affairs scientific.

“Mr. Caruth? Father seems to have known his father, and Mr. Caruth, knowing that father wanted to go to the Baltic, offered his yacht. At least, that’s what they say,” concluded the girl. “For my part, I don’t believe it. Do you?”

Bristow hesitated. “No,” he answered, at last. “I happen to know that it is at least partly untrue. But, Olga, don’t express any doubt publicly. I suspect this is a big thing, and indiscreet talking would probably play hob with a good many people, including the Professor. What is your part in this, Olga? Do you go with him?”

The girl nodded. “Of course,” she answered readily. “He says he wants me to, and of course I can’t let him go alone. And yet, do you know, Joe, I don’t believe he really wants me to go at all?”

The reporter nodded slowly. The skein was still too tangled for him to unravel, but he was studying it intently. “Why go?” he asked. “Olga, I don’t want to be selfish. I have waited a long time, and I was prepared to keep on waiting as long as I could see you from time to time. But I can’t let you go away from me this way, especially to Russia. Why not marry me at once? Then I can speak to your father from a different footing. Perhaps I can persuade him to give up the trip.”

“If you only could! But——”

Bristow thought she was yielding and pushed his advantage. “Olga dear!” he urged. “Come to me.” He took the girl in his arms, and she gazed up into his face with the expression that a woman wears for one man only. “If I could, Joe,” she murmured. “If I only could! But I can’t; you know I can’t. Father would go alone, and I should never forgive myself.”

For a moment the reporter held her, looking tenderly into her blue eyes; then he released her. “Well,” he said briskly, “that settles it. I must talk to the Professor. I suppose he is in his laboratory?”

“Yes.”

“All right. I won’t be longer than I can help. Wait for me.”

When Bristow entered the laboratory, he found the Professor pacing up and down the room in a state of suppressed excitement. When he recognized his visitor, he strove to greet him calmly, but despite himself his irritation shone through.

“Mr. Bristow!” he exclaimed. “You’ve come about my note, I suppose?”

“Yes; that and——”

“I have nothing more to say. I told it all in the note. I am going to the Baltic to get proof of my theory about sea-floors. I am going on the yacht of Mr. Caruth, a young scientific friend of mine. That is all. I can’t discuss it further.”

The reporter concealed his dismay. Olga had certainly not exaggerated the old man’s condition. He had aged markedly since Bristow had last seen him. He was burning himself out. It occurred to the reporter that the conspirators—for he did not doubt that there was a conspiracy—had better be careful or the Professor would not live to carry out their wishes, whatever these might be.

“Just as you say, Professor,” he answered. “But I want to talk to you about something else. Won’t you ask me to sit down?” He moved a chair up beside the old man’s accustomed seat, and stood waiting.

Professor Shishkin hesitated for an instant. Then the demands of courtesy had their way. “I’m sorry,” he muttered. “I’m not myself. I’m an old man, and I grow forgetful. Sit down, Mr. Bristow. I’m very glad to see you. Ask me what you will.”

“Even unto the half of your kingdom?” queried the reporter. “I want more than that, Professor. I want Miss Olga!”

“Olga!” The Professor half rose. “What do you mean?” he gasped.

“I mean that I want to marry her,” returned Bristow. The people who called Bristow cheeky would not have known him. His heart was thumping painfully, and his color came and went, though he managed to keep his features calm. “We love each other, and we want to marry.”

For a moment Professor Shishkin stared at the young man. Then he burst into a fit of laughter that made the reporter look at him in amazement.

But, unheeding, the Professor cackled on as if he would never stop. His shrunken form fairly shook with merriment that rapidly grew hysterical. So long it continued that Bristow forgot his own excited feelings and grew anxious.

At last the old man calmed himself. “I beg your pardon, Mr. Bristow,” he quavered. “I beg your pardon. I was very discourteous. I was not laughing at you, but at the way things come about. What creatures of fate we all are! We think we control events, but events really control us! Mr. Bristow, I have been worrying myself sick about Olga, and here you come, pat to the moment, to set everything straight. You say that Olga loves you?”

“Yes.” The reporter’s voice was hushed and reverent.

“Then everything is all right. I shall be delighted to have her marry you. But I must impose some conditions.”

The Professor’s voice had grown stronger. Years seemed to have fallen from his shoulders. Bristow stared at him in wonder.

“Anything you like,” he stammered.

Shishkin smiled. “Oh, it won’t be hard on you,” he promised. “Though you may find my conditions difficult to understand. Let me explain. I am compelled to go on this trip concerning which I have written you. I am compelled to take Olga with me—or to appear to do so. I don’t want to take her, but I cannot refuse openly. But no one acquainted with her will be on the vessel. If I can find a substitute who resembles her somewhat, no one is likely to detect the change. The trouble has been to get Olga’s consent and to hide her away while I was gone. Your proposal makes this easy.”

Amazedly the reporter listened. The old man was showing a new phase of character—a phase novel to Bristow, who had always thought of him only as an aged scientist engrossed in matters far removed from worldly scheming. But then, neither had he ever thought of him in connection with Russian terrorism, in which it now seemed that he was involved. Breathlessly, yet delighted at his easy success, he waited for the old man to continue.

Professor Shishkin did not keep him waiting long. “Now,” he went on, “my consent to your marriage to Olga is conditional on this. You must find some one who reasonably resembles Olga, and who is willing for a consideration to go with me in her place. You must bring her here the night before we sail. I will have an old minister friend of mine waiting. He can marry you and Olga. Then Olga and the substitute will change clothes. When you take Olga away, the substitute can remain. She can wear a veil as long as any one who knows Olga is likely to see her. Once on the yacht, we will be safe from detection.”

Bristow gasped. Scarcely could he believe his ears. The Professor had taken to intrigue as if he had been dabbling in it all his life. What next?

“But,” he questioned, “where can I find a substitute? Do you know of any one like Olga——”

“Dozens of them. Hundreds of girls in New York resemble her more or less. Olga is of a very common type.”

The reporter flushed angrily. He did not think Olga of a common type. To him there was no one like her. Still, he could scarcely quarrel with her father for saying so.

“It won’t be as easy as you think,” he returned. “Still, it might be done.”

“It must be done. Otherwise Olga must go with me. A power stronger than I decrees it.”

“Oh, well, in that event—let me think!” The reporter was beginning to enter into the spirit of the thing. “I believe I know the very girl you want. She’s doing a turn at Weser’s Music Hall. She does look like Olga in a general sort of way.”

“An actress?” questioned the Professor.

“Humph! Well, she calls herself one, and I guess we’ll let it go at that. I’ve known her for a good while, though never very well, and I believe she’s straight. That’s her reputation, anyhow. I do believe that by making-up a little she could pass for Olga with people who didn’t know her well.”

“That is all that is necessary. So long as she has the right height and figure, and bears a general resemblance to Olga, no one will question her identity if I introduce her as my daughter. Oh, yes! It will be easy. Where can I see this girl?”

Bristow looked at his watch. “She’ll be at the theatre now,” he announced. “I’ll hurry up to town and catch her as she comes out, and arrange——”

“Never mind. I’ll go with you and see her at once. There is no time to lose.” The Professor rose. “Remember, Mr. Bristow,” he added seriously: “this is no pleasure masquerade. It may easily become a matter of life and death for me, for Olga, and for others. I do not tell you more because I am sworn not to do so, and because the less you know the better; but don’t think for a moment that this is anything but deadly earnest. Now, let us go.”

Bristow rose. “Certainly,” he agreed. “But hadn’t we better speak to Olga first?”

The Professor looked puzzled. “To Olga? Why?” he questioned.

“Well, she might conceivably object. Women don’t always look at things from the same point of view as men.”

The Professor hesitated; then he waved his hand indifferently. “Perhaps you are right,” he admitted. “But Olga must agree. Seriously, this is the only means of saving her life and mine.”

CHAPTER TEN

BRISTOW and the Professor had been waiting at the stage door for only a few minutes when men and women, singly or in twos or threes, began to dribble through the gates and lose themselves in the homeward-bound crowds.

“Miss Lee will be out here in a minute now, Professor,” observed the reporter. “See if you can pick her out. If you can, it will be a sort of a test as to her resemblance to Olga. If you can’t, I’ll show you.”

The Professor nodded. Years seemed to have fallen from his shoulders. “Very well,” he agreed cheerfully.

No misgivings as to the girl’s acceptance of his offer troubled him. His idea was to offer her a trip to Europe, abundant fine clothes, reasonable money, and the chance to play lady for a few months among cultured people, and to ask in return only that she should pass as his daughter. Concerning the risks of the trip, he intended to say nothing, feeling confident that there would be no risk for her. Even if the worst came to the worst and he himself went to a Russian prison—which seemed unlikely—he could not conceive how she could come to harm, his desire to leave Olga behind being based on very different reasons. Offering everything, and asking only a service that was in itself a pleasure, Professor Shishkin could not see how any girl could hesitate. All of which shows that he was not familiar with certain temptations which every handsome working girl and especially every actress in the great city had long been schooled to resist.

At last she came, and he picked her out instantly. The likeness to Olga was striking, though the differences were so great that no one who really knew either girl would be at all likely to mistake her for the other. With Bristow at his side, he started forward.

Miss Lee might fairly be called a type. From her high-ratted pompadour, past her exaggerated straight-front, to the flare at the bottom of her cheap skirt, she was dressed in the style. Neat as a cherry blossom, she carried herself with a dash that the Professor found himself mentally approving. A spot of red burned in either cheek, and her eyes snapped as she stepped upon the street. A student of the sex would have declared that she was in a royal rage.

The Professor was not a connoisseur in women, however, and he did not suspect that Miss Lee had just been “called down” by the stage manager for being late in answering her call, and had been told in no uncertain terms that if she was late again she could stay away for good. Miss Lee had glared at the stage manager, but had not answered back. Twelve dollars a week may not be much to some people, but when it is one’s sole support, one is likely to think twice before casting it away. Having held her tongue, Miss Lee was in the condition of an engine on which the safety valve is tied down. She trembled on the verge of an explosion.

Ignorant of this, the Professor and Bristow stepped in the girl’s way and raised their hats.

“How do you do, Miss Lee?” remarked the latter. “I want to introduce to you my friend, Professor Shishkin. He wants to talk to you on a very important subject.”

If the girl was startled, she did not show it. “Gee!” she exclaimed, with pretended lightness, glancing at the Professor’s venerable aspect. “What’s broke loose? Has me long lost uncle cashed in and left his money to his darling brother’s offspring?”

The Professor did not quite follow. “No-o,” he quavered slowly. “I wanted to see you on a personal matter. I have been studying your appearance, and I——”

“Oh! Ain’t you ashamed? And you so old, too! Fade away!”

“My dear young lady!” The Professor did not understand what the girl meant, but he gathered that she was reproving him. “My dear young lady! It is because I am so old that I venture to address you. As I say, I have been studying your appearance, and I want to talk with you quietly. If you will go with me to——”

Miss Lee flushed. “Ain’t you the frisky grandpop!” she demanded scornfully. “Back to the bald-headed row for yours. You mashers make me tired. Gee! I’ll have to take to eating onions to keep you off. I take it right hard that you should let me in for this, Mr. Bristow. You know I ain’t that sort.”

Bristow had been listening in secret amusement, but at the girl’s protest he started forward. “It’s all right, Miss Lee!” he said. “The Professor really wants to talk to you on business. He is to be my father-in-law, and I wouldn’t think of encouraging him in any capers. He’s no masher.”

“Masher!” At last the Professor understood. “Good heavens!” he exclaimed. “Do you take me for one of those vapid fools that exhibit themselves on the street corners? I should have thought my white hair would have shielded me from such an imputation. After all, however, it may be natural enough. I suppose I began wrong. But I am not that kind. Without denying your evident attractions, young lady, I assure you that I have sought you for a very different reason. This is strictly business. I can’t talk here. Perhaps”—an idea struck the Professor—“perhaps you will do me the honor of dining with me at some place near here—any place you like to name!”

For some moments the girl stared at him shrewdly. After all, perhaps—— “I guess I made a mistake,” she said at last, slowly. “It’s hard to guess sometimes. I’ll take dinner with you and hear what you’ve got to say. But you take my tip and don’t try any funny business, or I’ll call a cop. See?”

The Professor nodded.

“All right, then,” declared the girl. “There’s a spaghetti emporium right back of here on Sixth Avenue. We’ll go there.”

A few moments later the trio were sitting in a huge plate-glass restaurant, and Miss Lee, at the Professor’s request, was ordering a somewhat elaborate dinner. Then, while she awaited its coming, she leaned forward across the table. “Well!” she began, ignoring Bristow, who plainly desired to remain in the background. “Well, now’s the time to spring the story of your life in thirteen chapters and tell what led up to this thrilling moment—unless you’d rather wait till after the tooth-picks. You ain’t going to spring an Arabian Nights fable on me, are you?”

“Perhaps I may.”

“Really! Well, all right. I’m willing. Go ahead.”

The waiter brought the soup, and the girl began to eat with elaborate interest. The Professor noted that her table manners were good and would arouse no suspicion. Her slangy way of speaking gave him some misgivings, but he put them aside.

“My name,” he began, “is Shishkin.”

“What!” The girl laid down her spoon and regarded him severely. “Well, you’re original, any way,” she laughed. “Sure it ain’t Jones?”

“No—Shishkin. I am a Russian, but I have been living in this country for twenty years. Will you tell me something about yourself?”

“Cert. Florence Lee. Twenty years old. From Missouri. Been working in New York three years. Live in Brooklyn. Anything else? Want to see my vaccination certificate?”

“No, what you have said is sufficient for the present. I only wanted something to go on. I am a scientist. My work is chiefly in connection with the ocean. I am about to start for Europe on what will undoubtedly be my last trip. Ordinarily, my daughter would go with me, but she desires to get married. I must have some one in her place.”

Miss Lee paused in the act of raising an olive to her lips. “I ain’t a trained nurse,” she objected tentatively.

“I don’t want a trained nurse,” returned the Professor, with a show of spirit. “I have sought you out because you look very much like my daughter. What I want you to do is to take her place and her name; to pretend to be she; and to go to Europe with me. We may be gone six months. You shall have everything my daughter would have had and be treated exactly as she would be treated. Will you go?”

But Miss Lee was past speech. With mouth agape, she stared at the old man. Anything can happen in New York, but this went beyond her experience.

“Well, if that ain’t the limit!” she murmured, at last. “Say, when did you come out of Bellevue?”

“Bellevue?”

“The psychopathic ward. Gee! it must be a lovely world you live in—till the pipe goes out.”

Dimly the Professor understood that he was being mocked. “I am not jesting, young lady,” he explained, with dignity. “I may add that when the trip is over I will bring you back to New York and give you a thousand dollars.”

The girl’s eyes burned into his. “I am not for sale,” she answered briefly. “Don’t think it, grandpop. There are plenty that are. Go after them.”

“No one will do so well as you. Didn’t I explain? I am compelled to seem to take my daughter with me on this trip. I don’t want to take her, and she does not want to go. Yet she must go unless I can find some one to pass for her. You look like her. When you dress as she does, you will look very much like her. That is why I have come to you first. With a few days’ training, you will find it easy to pass for Olga, my daughter. No one who is going on this trip has ever met her. And it won’t be unpleasant. You will be treated with all honor and consideration. Will you come?”

“Come!” Miss Lee had gone back to her dinner and was discussing it with much gusto. “Look here, grandpop! Do you mean to tell me that all this is on the level?”

“Certainly.” The Professor did not speak slang, but he understood it to some extent.

Florence stared at him once more. She did not believe that he was speaking the truth, or, rather—for she had been trained in a hard school—she did not believe that he was speaking the whole truth. She felt sure that there was something behind—as, indeed, there was. Still, she was tempted. A yacht, a trip to Europe, a masquerade, and a thousand dollars! It all sounded very fascinating to a girl who realized that she might be thrown out of work at any moment, with only a week’s salary between her and starvation. Of course it might be a trap. Florence was handsome, and she knew it; and she had heard of traps for handsome girls. This might be one, but if so, it was very elaborately baited. Besides, she felt supreme confidence in her ability to defend herself if need be. Still, she hesitated.

“How’m I to know?” she questioned. “The men are always springing something new, and a girl’s got to be mighty careful. I ain’t for sale; anyhow, I ain’t on the bargain table; before I go off I’ve got to be sure that the man’s on the level and can do more than make a noise like a tin bank. If you ain’t stringing me—if you ain’t escaped from the crazy house—prove it. It oughtn’t to be hard.”

Professor Shishkin considered. “My friend and future son-in-law, Mr. Bristow, will endorse everything I say,” he declared. “Further, I should be glad to have you talk with my daughter, whose place you will take. Do you know East Orange?”

“New Jersey? Sure!”

“Very well. Come down there early to-morrow. Ask any one to show you where Professor Shishkin lives. You’ll find a pretty, vine-clad cottage. Nothing at all to make you afraid. Come in and you’ll find Olga and me waiting for you. I think we can make you believe. Only”—the Professor’s voice grew serious—“only please wear a veil, and don’t tell any one what I have told you. I’d much rather you would refuse outright than have you talk. I want you to pass as my daughter. The moment the truth gets out, you cease to be of use to me, and I get into grave danger. So you must be secret. Now, on that understanding, will you come?”

Miss Lee reached her hand across the table. “I’ll come,” she promised. “I’ll see the thing through. If it ain’t straight, you’re the biggest—— Well, never mind, I’ll see it through.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

“PUT not your faith in princes.”

Baron Demidroff, chief of the third section of the Russian police, the dreaded secret police, pondered this sentiment as he sat in the office of his immediate superior, the Minister of the Interior. The Baron had been thirty years in the police service, and for fifteen years he had been its chief. In those years he had weathered many a storm that had bade fair to sweep him from place and power, but never a one of them had seemed so menacing as that which he was confronting.

“‘Had I but served my God with half the zeal I served my king,’” he quoted, “‘he would not leave me naked to my enemies.’ You think the case is desperate, then?”

The Minister flung out his hands. “Judge for yourself, Baron,” he said. “Count Strogoff demanded your immediate dismissal. He was striking at me over your shoulders, of course. Your retirement meant mine, for I cannot afford to have one of Strogoff’s men in your place. The Emperor knew it, and that is the only reason you still hold your post. I did what I could, and will do what I can. But the most I could win was three months’ delay, and to get that I had to talk vaguely of great discoveries you had in train. You will have to make them, my friend, or it is good-by to power for both of us.”

The Baron considered. He was a vigorous young-old man, with a hawk-like face, crowned by beautiful white hair. His mustache and imperial were the pink of military exquisiteness. In his eyes slumbered a consuming fire.

“Humph!” he said slowly. “What discoveries would your excellency suggest?”

The other laughed shortly, but with no merriment in his tones. “First and best,” he answered, “find the Orkney and recover her gold. Its loss is Strogoff’s strongest card against you and me. I wish I had never recommended borrowing that money on the Princess Napraxine’s estates. To take it out of Strogoff’s control was like snatching a bone from a hungry dog.”

“Russia needed it,” hazarded the other.

“Of course Russia needed it. There was neither justice nor expediency in longer holding an estate for the benefit of a girl who had been missing twenty years, and who is certainly dead. The Emperor only anticipated when he decided to escheat part of it. But Strogoff had controlled it as trustee for ten years. It was madness to suppose that he would not seek revenge when forced to give it up.”

“You counted on his enmity when you recommended the escheatal.”

“Of course”—impatiently. “But I did not count on the money being lost. That was your fault, Baron. You were much to blame.”

The Baron’s face showed that he did not agree with his superior’s assertion, but he offered nothing in rebuttal. The Minister knew all the circumstances, and if he chose to blame his subordinate, that subordinate could gain nothing by demonstrating the unjustness of the accusation.

“If I recover the gold even at this late day, how then?” he questioned.

“It would help! It would help! It would gain us time, and time fights for us. Find the gold, and we can baffle Strogoff for a year or two longer; but as long as he controls the vast remaining estates of the Princess Napraxine, he will be dangerous.”

“Ah!” Baron Demidroff tugged at his mustache thoughtfully. “Failing recovery of gold,” he suggested, “is there anything else your excellency can recommend as likely to rehabilitate my position?”

“Nothing! Except, of course, the impossible. Find the Princess Napraxine, and let her take the control of her property out of Strogoff’s hands, and he will be crippled permanently. But that is moonshine.”

“Perhaps not!” The Baron smiled cheerfully at the Minister. “Stranger things have happened. As a matter of fact, I came here to-day to inform your excellency that I have good hopes of recovering the Orkney’s gold, and that I believe I have found the Princess Napraxine.”

The Minister did not start. Instead he sat and stared at the Baron as if he would read the other’s very soul. “Humph!” he grunted. “Humph! Humph! Humph!” Then after a moment: “The proofs will have to be very strong, Baron!”

“They will be indisputable.”

The other mused a moment. “The girl will have to be carefully coached,” he suggested, “and she will have to be a strong character to carry the thing through. Strogoff is a hard man to deceive. And detection would be serious!”

The Baron did not resent the clear imputation that the other’s words conveyed. He seemed to take distrust as a matter of course. “Your excellency is mistaken,” he replied suavely. “This is no case of imposition. I have really found the Princess.”

“After twenty years?”

“After twenty years! The proofs are not completed, but the evidence is already morally conclusive. If I can recover the gold, as I believe I can, I should be ready even now to submit them to the Emperor, confident that he would consider them satisfactory.”

The Minister settled back in his chair with a long breath. The thing was too good, and came too pat to the moment, to be true. It seemed incredible that the Princess Napraxine, stolen at the age of three, should be found twenty years later and restored to her rightful position. Still, Demidroff was a wonderful man, and could be relied on not to undertake anything unless he had good prospects of carrying it through. If he brought forward a claimant, that claimant would be well fortified with proofs. And if she won the estates, the victory would be so overwhelming that it was worth taking some risks to win it.

“Tell me as much of the story as you think best, Baron,” he ordered.

The Baron obeyed. “As your excellency knows,” he began, “I have agents in terrorist circles—practically as many as they have in ours. Most things that they do reach me in the course of time, though usually too late to be of much value. Some months ago I began to realize Strogoff’s power, and it seemed to me that it might be well to find the Princess. It occurred to me to make investigations through one of my agents into the records of the Brotherhood dating back to the time of the abduction. In consequence I learned that the Princess had been stolen by Count Lladislas, a Pole, who had been committed to the fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul three years before, at the behest of the Grand Duke Ivan, who admired the Countess Lladislas. After Lladislas was reported dead, the Countess married the Grand Duke morganatically.

“Lladislas escaped and stole the child. Possibly he had been misinformed and thought he was stealing his own child; I am not certain as to this. At all events, he passed her off as such. He took her to America, changed his name to Shishkin, and became professor in one of the small colleges. He still lives, and I think can be made to testify. I learned this only yesterday, and am still considering how to go about the matter.

“So much for the Princess. Now for the gold. I learned recently, through the same agent who gave me the first information in the matter of the Princess, that the Brotherhood had obtained a clue to the Orkney’s gold. My information was fragmentary, but I learned that it had dispatched an agent to New York to see a Mr. Ashton Caruth, to whom had been sent a letter which was supposed to tell something about the gold. I cabled Struve, our consul-general at New York, to get that letter at all hazards. He tried, but he bungled somewhere. His men killed a valet of Caruth’s, but did not get the letter. He does not know who did, but he believes it is now in the hands of a woman calling herself Marie Fitzhugh, who was in Caruth’s apartments that night, and who is probably the agent of the Brotherhood. She has not been identified yet, but she will be soon. Struve is keeping a close watch on her, and thinks that sooner or later she will lead us to the gold.

“So the case stands. I am awaiting developments. Any day—any hour—news may come. Did I speak too strongly when I said I had hopes?”

The Minister sprang to his feet and thrust out his hand enthusiastically. Naturally optimistic, he was already certain of triumph. “Hopes!” he cried. “Hopes! They are more than hopes, my dear Baron; they spell triumph.”

“I think so.” The Baron rose. “I have three months’ time,” he added. “Much may be done in three months.”

“Much indeed! Keep me advised.”

The Baron went out, but in ten minutes he was back with a paper in his hand.

“I found this on my desk,” he cried. “It came in half an hour ago. Read it.”

The message ran as follows:

New York.—Shishkin announces departure to dredge in Baltic for scientific purposes. Goes on yacht of Ashton Caruth. Takes daughter with him.

CHAPTER TWELVE

THE Sea Spume, with its curiously assorted passengers, sailed from New York on Saturday.

Besides Caruth, it carried Marie Fitzhugh, Professor Shishkin, his pretended daughter, Thomas Wilkins, and several bewhiskered individuals whose names ended in ski or vitch. They were the divers whom Miss Fitzhugh had selected and Professor Shishkin had brought along ostensibly to explore the bottom of the Baltic for proofs of his theory of rising sea-floors. Caruth felt sure that they were nihilists and suspected them of having bombs on their persons, but it was too late to balk at that.

The yacht was swift and the weather fine, and the miles fell behind with gratifying regularity. The sun shone bright by day, and the moon cast silvery gleams by night. In short, the astronomy of the trip was all that could be desired.

As soon as the yacht was out of sight of land, the Professor, who was a born sailor, took occasion to explain matters a little more fully to Miss Lee, who likewise seemed not to feel the motion of the vessel. He explained them not because he wanted to do so, but because he could not help himself. The girl was altogether too clever not to suspect that something was being kept back. In any event, she must very soon find out that the yacht was going to dredge for something besides sea creatures. Unless told enough to satisfy her, she would surely ask questions that might show her ignorance of matters concerning which Olga could scarcely be supposed to be ignorant. It was better to tell her something of the objects of the trip rather than to risk the possible effects of her inquisitiveness.

He told her that the Sea Spume was going to search for a vessel that had been wrecked a year or two before, with a large sum in gold on her. He admitted frankly that he himself had come in order that by his scientific reputation he might conceal the true object of the trip.

He meant to go so far and no farther. But he had not reckoned on Miss Lee. She heard him out; then she turned questioner.

“These heart-to-heart talks are all right,” she remarked, “if they are all right. But if they ain’t, they’re punk. I’m from Missouri, y’know, and I’ve got to be shown. Why d’ye want to hide the object of your trip? Who owns this gold you’re after?”

The Professor hesitated. “My friends own it,” he answered at last.

“Then why don’t they go after it openly? A man’s got a right to his own, ain’t he? What’s the need of all this masquerading?”

The Professor squirmed. The question, though natural, was not what he had expected.

Pitilessly the girl went on: “Who are you afraid of? Who’s likely to interfere with you?”

“Well!” Professor Shishkin was desperate. “Well!” he admitted. “I might as well tell you that our title to the gold is disputed, and we are likely to have trouble if it is known that we are after it. It is really ours, but our enemies are unscrupulous and dangerous, and they could make things very unpleasant for us. They would have gotten the gold long ago if they had known just where it was.”

“Humph! Then you do know just where it is?”

“We think we do.”

Miss Lee considered a while. “It ain’t good enough,” she remarked. “I’ve studied geography, and I’ve been looking up the Baltic lately. There’s too much Russovitsky about this game. I’ll bet a box of taffy there’s a nihilist plot mixed in it somewhere.”

“Sh!” The Professor’s face had changed, and he held up his hand warningly. “There’ll be suspicion enough on that point before long, I fear,” he whispered. “Don’t start it any sooner than it can be helped.”

“But is it true?”

“I can’t tell you. You must draw your own conclusions. If it is true, would you draw back? The cause of the revolution is the cause of freedom.”

“Humph! Maybe so. I’ll think about it. But—I want to know. What’ll the Czarski do to us if he catches us?”

“Nothing. We’ll lose the gold, but nothing more. We are American citizens on an American vessel on the high seas. No one will dare to touch us.”

“Well, where do I come in? What’s my part in the melodrama?”

“You?” The Professor was amazed. “Why, my dear young lady, my daughter wanted to marry and didn’t want to come. I told you all this.”

“Ye-es. You told me why she didn’t want to come. But you ain’t told me why you want everybody to think she did come.”

The Professor hesitated, and the girl put her finger on the weak spot. “You didn’t bring her because you thought it was too dangerous,” she remarked shrewdly; “and you didn’t want others to know how risky you thought it was. And you picked me for the goat. Ain’t that it?”

The Professor leaned forward. “Not exactly,” he explained. “It would be very dangerous for her to visit Russia. Being what she is and who she is, it would be very dangerous. For you, it is not so. Danger may threaten you, but you can always escape by declaring who you are. With her it is different. Besides”—he spoke slowly and impressively—“I have reasons—reasons that I assure you are crucial—for having it thought that she is with us. I implore you to keep the secret. It might and probably would cost her her life if certain persons on board suspected the truth. You will keep faith?”

“Oh, sure! I’ll keep faith. You needn’t worry about that. Especially if that stuck-up Fitzhugh woman is one of the ‘certain persons.’”

The Professor said nothing more. He was by no means satisfied with the situation; but, then, he had been dissatisfied with it from the first. It was a mere choice of evils, and, he told himself despondently, in trying to better matters he was only too likely to make them worse. Nothing but the absolute necessity of keeping the real Olga out of Russia would have ever driven him to such a desperate scheme as this.

It was really more desperate than he knew, though not more so than he might have guessed had he known of the relations that were developing between Miss Lee and Thomas Wilkins.

These two had drawn very close together during the trip. While neither would have endured for a moment any intimation that they were not as good as any one breathing, still neither could help feeling more or less out of place in their new surroundings. The girl saw this more clearly and felt it more sharply than the man. She recognized the fact that these people were lucky enough to possess what she had longed for all her life—money and social position—and concluded that their ways must be correct ways. Therefore she set herself to study them and to mould herself by their standards. The conditions were peculiar, and perhaps she might grasp the money and the position if she once fitted herself for them.

Wilkins, on the other hand, had no yearnings for the social altitudes. It never occurred to him to copy any one else’s manners. He only felt vaguely uncomfortable, more or less seasick, and very much bored. Therefore he welcomed the companionship of the one person among the cabin passengers with whom he somehow felt himself to be on a plane.

As the voyage continued, this intimacy increased. Caruth noticed it and vaguely wondered at it; but then he had wondered from the first at the rather singular manners and conversation of the Professor’s daughter. Miss Fitzhugh noticed it, and did not like it; just why, she scarcely knew. But neither she nor Caruth made any effort to check it. Supposing Miss Lee to be the Professor’s daughter and therefore devoted to his cause, they naturally were glad of anything that tended to bind Wilkins closer to their cause.

So matters ran along till nearly the end of the voyage. Cattegat and Skagerrak had been traversed, Copenhagen was a blur of light on the clouds behind them; the widening sea space before them showed that the broad Baltic lay close at hand.

Miss Lee and Wilkins sat together on the quarter-deck watching the moonlight as it shone white on the wake of the Sea Spume. For some time neither had spoken.

At last Wilkins broke the silence. “Lady,” he said, “I s’pose your pa’s told you how I come to be on this here trip?”

Florence nodded. The Professor had not told her, but it seemed unnecessary to admit that fact.

Wilkins went on. “I’ll own right up to you,” he explained, “that when I come I warn’t by no means satisfied that I was gettin’ a square deal; a ten per cent rake-off ain’t very high when you hold the joker and nobody else can get nothin’ unless you helps. Then I wasn’t satisfied about Jim. That Miss Fitzhugh swears her friends didn’t kill him; but, then, she naturally would, you know, and I’ve got my doubts. Still, there didn’t seem nothin’ else for me to do but to come along, and give ’em all the rope they wanted, and watch my chance to find out about Jim and to get a bigger share of the gold. But I want to say now that that’s all to the past. Your friends is my friends, and I’ll stick by ’em. You understand?”

Florence did not understand—how should she? She had never heard of “Jim,” nor of his death; nor did she know that Wilkins held the key to the location of the treasure. She was rapidly finding out things, however; so she held her peace and let the plainsman talk on.

“I promised to show them Bill’s letter as soon as we got into the Baltic,” he continued. “That means to-night. I guess I’d have done it any way, but now I know you, I ain’t hesitatin’ no more.”

Florence found her tongue. “It’s Bill’s letter that tells where the wreck is, isn’t it?” she guessed.

“Sure! The place ain’t much more than a day from here. I’m going to show it to them pretty soon. But first I wanted to say somethin’ to you.”

Florence scarcely heard him. An idea, vague and unformulated, was stirring in her brain. Could any gain accrue to her personally from the fact that Wilkins alone knew the whereabouts of the gold?

While she considered, the man went on. “Lady,” he declared earnestly, “I’m a rough fellow, and I know I ain’t half good enough for you. I know your dad would have a fit if he thought I was makin’ love to you; and your fine friends would think I was crazy. Maybe I am; but it’s for you to say. I’m a sheepman, lady, and many a night when I’ve been bedded down alongside a camp-fire, watching them muttons masticatin’ and baain’ to each other, I’ve thought how nice it would be to go home to find somebody waiting for me. And the minute I see you and hear you talk so bright and clever, says I to myself: ‘That’s the girl for me.’” Wilkins paused for an instant and then went on. “I ain’t no poor man, lady. I’ve got twenty-five thousand baa-baas in Colorado. I didn’t come on this trip for the money, though half a million ain’t to be snuz at. So you’ll understand that when I gets my share home I’ll be mighty well off. Now can’t you and me frame it up together? Say the word, and I’ll make ’em consent before I gives up the letter telling where the gold is.”

Wilkins paused and waited for an answer. His face was as expressionless as ever, but in spite of himself a tremor crept into his voice. Plainly he was very much in earnest.

Florence, on the other hand, was by no means ready to answer. To keep “him” guessing was one of the cardinal precepts of the school in which she had been trained.

“No,” she answered slowly; “not yet.”

A flush came on the Westerner’s face. “You mean——” he began.

“I mean this ain’t bargain day,” exclaimed the girl impatiently. “I ain’t saying a word against you, but I’ll have to think a long time before I make up my mind. When I do, it won’t be anybody on this yacht that’ll stop me. But I guess I’ll have to leave you on the anxious bench for a while.”

“All right, lady! Take your time.”

“I’m going to. But I’m goin’ to tell you something right now, and that is that I ain’t stuck on this crowd I’m with.”

Wilkins’s jaw dropped. “But your pa——”

“Popper ain’t the man he was. He ain’t nothing but a deuce in this game. He ain’t going to make anything out of it at all. Do you know who is?”

“Them revolutionists, I guess—what ain’t grafted on the way.”

“Well! I’m not in this to help any old revolution. I tell you right now, Mr. Wilkins, that it’s me for the gold if I can get it to Noo York.”

“Ain’t you afraid of them bombovitches?” demanded the man.

“Me! Not in Noo York, I ain’t. In Russia, I ain’t saying.”

A delighted grin came over Wilkins’s face. “Say!” he exclaimed. “You’re all rightski. They tried to scare me with them fellows, and I let ’em think they had, but, Lord sakes, they ain’t troubling me none. If they come to Colorado after me, the Czar’ll have one less to put in his dungeonoffski.”

“Then”—the girl held out her hand—“it’s understood. We’ll stand together. If we get a chance to skiddoo with the gold, we’ll do it. An’ I’ll marry you the day we get it to Noo York.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

BLACK and high, the islands of the Aland Archipelago rise out of the Baltic. All winter long they lie bound about with ice. With the spring, the ice, borne southward by the waking streams of the north, grinds past them, scraping and tearing, rending all that lies in its path. The short summer follows, when the great bowl of the Baltic rocks to the horizon like molten gold; when the black rocks take on a coat of living green; and the sea birds scream as they flash through the surf that breaks against them or tears through the narrow channels between.

On the eastern edge of the archipelago rise two islands, Burndo and Ivono, Siamese twins whose tie has not been wholly severed. The channel between them lies almost east and west and not north and south, and so has been spared the full scour of the annual ice-flood. Cut deep at each seaward end, in the middle it is interrupted by a dike of harder rock that as yet persists against the inevitable and at low tide changes it into two inlets that nearly touch each other.

Into the western inlet, driven by her slowing engines, and urged by waves and tide, the Orkney had sped two years before; had impaled herself upon a sunken rock; and, shuddering backward, had sunk with her crew and her passengers and her million pounds sterling of gold.

No eye had seen her sink. The little fishing village of Burndo, scattered along the western inlet, close to the central neck, had slept soundly, lulled by the roar of the wind. The watchman at the beacon tower on the heights of Ivono Island had dozed, not watching. If cries arose from the sinking ship; if men battled for life in the surf; if the waves hammered and the wind tore, it passed unnoticed. When morning dawned the Orkney lay ten fathoms deep, and the wreckage and bodies belonging to her, caught in the tide, had been swept away toward Copenhagen and the vast Atlantic. Two succeeding winters had torn her masts away and ravished her upper decks of all their superstructure. But the hull lay intact, buried far beneath the green water.

For five days the Sea Spume had lain moored close to the head of the channel, within sight of the village, while the divers searched the bottom hour after hour until the last ray of daylight vanished. One of them was really a scientific assistant, and to him was allotted the task of making such observations and collecting such specimens as would naturally have been desired by Professor Shishkin, had the object of the expedition actually been that which it purported to be. Indeed, so far as the Professor was concerned, the work was conducted in good faith, the researches planned really being in exact line with his long-cherished ambitions.

The other two divers, under direction of Captain Wilson, commander of the Sea Spume, who had necessarily been taken into confidence some time before, lost no time in setting about their search for the wreck. In less than half an hour after the Sea Spume was in position, they were hard at work at the bottom of the inlet.

It was not to be expected that the search would be brief. The inlet (or high-tide channel), though comparatively small, was large as compared with the Orkney. Its bottom was rocky, with irregular humps and unexpected holes, making search slow and difficult. Even if the unlucky steamer had run upon the beach itself, it must have slipped back and been carried by the current to a greater or less distance—just how far no one could predict. The divers might chance on it at their first descent, or might not discover it for a week or more. And after it was found would come the toilsome task of salvaging the gold. Five million dollars would weigh about ten tons, and, even lightened as it would be by being in the water, it would not be the work of a day to move it, even if it could be readily come at, which was improbable.

The adventurers had laid their plans with a full knowledge of these facts. Had there been any chance of speedy work, they might have tried to conceal their presence, but under the circumstances this would be impossible. Therefore they had resolved to proclaim their presence and even to welcome visitors if any should appear, up to the moment before the gold began to be brought aboard.

Besides the advisability of making their presence known to the authorities, there was always the off-chance that careful watch as the launch sped to and fro in the inlet might disclose the Orkney lying like a dark shadow beneath the water. The fisher boats, of course, had not discovered it, but this argued little, because the boats generally used the other, or eastern, outlet, rather than the western; and further, perhaps, because the fishermen were not looking for anything of the kind.

So soon as possible after the divers had gone below the water, Caruth ordered out a steam launch to make the quarter-mile trip to the head of the inlet and visit the village which he knew lay there, though screened from view of the yacht by a turn in the channel.

Caruth had intended to go to the village alone on the first trip, leaving Marie Fitzhugh (who thought it best not to show herself) and Captain Wilson to superintend affairs on board the yacht and deal with any emergencies that might arise. It was no part of his plan to take Wilkins along, but when that individual joined him, evidently intending to go, he did not quite know how to refuse.

So far, he had no reason to question the plainsman’s good faith. Wilkins had produced his brother’s letter at the time promised, and it had proved to be all that he had claimed for it. Caruth could not risk exciting any animosity by showing unwillingness to trust the man on shore.

Suddenly, in the midst of his hesitation, he recalled the westerner’s marked liking for the pretended Olga Shishkin, and at once sought out that young woman and invited her to go on the trip to the village.

“You’ll be doing us all a favor if you’ll come, Miss Shishkin,” he urged. “Of course we are all loyal and all that, but”—he dropped his voice—“none of us know very much about Wilkins, and it would make things a good deal safer for your father and the rest of us if you’d go along and keep an eye on him. He’s all right, you know, but——”

“But you’re on the anxious bench all the same. I know how it is myself. Sure! I’ll go with pleasure, Mr. Caruth.”

The run up to the village was brief, and soon the launch grated against a little wooden pier and disembarked her passengers, who started toward the cluster of buildings that seemed to constitute the village.

“There’s the church and the store and the post-office and the mayor’s house,” explained Caruth, pointing out the several edifices. “There’s no mistaking any of them, once you know the type. I’ll have to go to the mayor first, to report my arrival, and give him a chance to inform St. Petersburg. You needn’t come in unless you like. It will take only a few minutes, and then we can see the town.”

By the time the party had reached the village, quite a little crowd had collected. Visitors are few on Burndo Island, and the news of their coming spread apace. Curious faces appeared at doors and windows, and gaping children lined the way.

Caruth vanished into the house of the mayor, where he found that his business would take a much longer time than he had expected. The mayor, a stupid and suspicious peasant, spoke no English, and Caruth spoke no Russian, and there was a delay until an interpreter could be found.

This interpreter proved to be a slim fellow, whose appearance, despite the fact that his features were hidden by a profusion of beard, nevertheless impressed Caruth with a vague sense of familiarity. For an instant, indeed, the young fellow was sure that he had seen the man before; the next moment, however, he dismissed the idea as preposterous.

But he quickly adverted to his former feeling when the interpreter addressed him in very good American.

“Mornin’, Cap’n,” he said, with a nod. “This old son of a gun wants to know who you are and what you want here, anyhow.”

Caruth gave his name and explained the object of his trip; then added: “Who are you? You talk like an American.”

“American! Well, I guess yes! Me for the starry banner every time. I’m from little old Noo York; I am. But wait a minute till I tell his pie-face what you say.”

He turned and translated what Caruth had said into halting Russian, and then appeared to render into English something that the Mayor said in return.

“He says you are a liar or crazy,” he translated cheerfully. “He puts it kinder easier, but that’s what it means all right. Say, that yarn you told me about hunting things at the bottom of the bay is straight, I suppose.”

“Of course it’s straight.”

“Well, I’ll try to sneeze it to him again, though I ain’t much on the Russian. It tastes too much like it sounds, and that’s enough. Say! I suppose you belong to the safety vault crowd and have barrels of simoleons at home!”

Caruth flushed; then laughed. The man’s impudence was refreshing. “Well,” he admitted, “I’ve got enough to keep me going.”

“I guessed so. Wait a minute. I must keep the old geezer satisfied.” He turned and for a moment the language of the Czar held the floor. Finally the man resumed.

“It’s that touch of yours about rising sea bottoms that gets him,” he explained. “He says he’s lived here all his life and never saw the sea-bottom rise yet, ’cept when the tide goes out. It’s a tough sort of a gag to spring on one of these two-by-four government officers what rank somewhere between jack high and a bobtail flush and is intelligenced according. Not but what I reckon it’s true enough. But about this here question of wealth. If you’ve got it to burn, I don’t reckon you’d care to pyramid it a million or so, would you?”

Caruth was startled, his unquiet conscience making him suspect that everything any one said to him had reference to his true errand.

“I don’t know,” he answered cautiously. “What have you got? A gold mine?”

The man laughed shortly. “A gold mine!” he echoed. “A gold mine! Well, I guess you might call it that. What I want to know is, do you care to go in on it? Or if you don’t, will you help out an American marooned on this durned holeski?”

Caruth nodded uneasily. “Oh, I suppose so,” he answered slowly. “I’m always willing to help a fellow countryman. But you’ll have to explain.” The man nodded. “I’ll explain all right,” he promised. “But you’ve got to answer all the questions on this sheet of paper first or you’ll have the Czarski in your hairski.”

The questions were long and tedious, and when they were finished Caruth rose with a sigh of relief.

The interpreter rose also. “I’ve told his joblots that you want me to show you round the mud puddle,” he explained. “That’ll give me a chance to spiel. Come along.”

The two walked to the door. As they walked out, Wilkins met them. “Miss Shishkin’s looking at the church,” he explained. “She’s——”

He broke off and his face grew red, then white, as his eyes fell on the interpreter. Once or twice he swallowed; then coughed. “D—— that Russian tobacco!” he exclaimed. “It’s been strangling me ever since I sniffed it half an hour ago.”

Caruth, who had waited smilingly till the plainsman recovered, glanced toward the church. “Shall we go over and join Miss Shishkin?” he suggested. “I’ve got an interpreter here who can—— Hello! what’s become of the fellow?”

The interpreter had vanished. In the few instants that Caruth’s attention was centred on Wilkins, he had slipped away, probably around one of the houses that stood close by. At first Caruth supposed that the disappearance would be but temporary, but as the minutes went by without sign, he was forced to conclude that it was both permanent and intentional.

When at last doubt no longer remained, the young fellow laughed angrily. “Let him go, confound him!” he exclaimed. “He was half crazy, anyhow. Come! Let’s go to the church.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

NEITHER Wilkins nor Florence had waited long for Caruth to return. In fact, that gentleman had scarcely vanished into the mayor’s office when Florence had turned to her companion.

“Gee!” she remarked. “Me for the breakaway. These high-brows gets on me nerves. Let’s see the town—even if it ain’t all to the giddy, it’s better than the old boat. Gee! but it’s slow!” Miss Lee, it will be observed, was glad to pretermit, when opportunity offered, the forms of polite speech that she was rapidly acquiring.

Wilkins looked at her suspiciously. “You ain’t seemed in no ways bored,” he suggested.

“Oh, I got to put up a front, of course,” rejoined the girl indifferently; “but if it wasn’t for you, I guess I’d fade away. This style of life’s all right for those that likes it, I guess, but it’s me for Coney Island every time.”

They had reached the church now and were peering in at the open door. Miss Lee was not impressed; she had seen Russian churches in her beloved New York, and mentally compared them with this one, much to its disadvantage. Wilkins, however, found it all new and interesting. The candles ranged before the icons, the gilt and glass of the altar, the tawdry trappings, all impressed him, and he advanced into the building, studying its details.

“PARDON, MADEMOISELLE! I MUST SPEAK TO YOU SECRETLY”

Scarcely had he left the girl when a man dressed in the habiliments of a priest stepped to her side, holding out his hat, as if for alms. As Florence stared at him, he muttered swiftly, in excellent English:

“Pardon, mademoiselle! I must speak to you secretly. You have been deceived. You are not Professor Shishkin’s daughter. You are a princess of Russia with a huge fortune. I have come from St. Petersburg to talk with you. Give me a chance, I beg.”

Miss Lee turned away. “Say, Mr. Wilkins,” she called. “I left my jacket in the boat. Would you mind chasin’ down and gettin’ it for me? I’ll wait here for you.”

When the plainsman had gone, Florence turned to the priest. “Make good,” she ordered briefly. “You look like the Caliph of Bagdad, and I guess you can do the magic. If I’m a face-card instead of a two-spot, of course I want to know it.”

The priest did not answer Florence’s speech in words. Turning, he stepped to the door and threw out his hand. “Begone!” he shouted to the curious crowd, and at the word it melted away.

Then he came back. “Will you not be seated, Princess?” he inquired courteously, pointing toward a bench that stood against the wall. “I regret that I have no better accommodation to offer you, but——”

Florence took the seat. “Cut it out,” she advised. “Get on with the fairy tale.”

The priest removed his cap and threw back his vestments, revealing himself as a well-preserved, courtly gentleman of perhaps fifty years of age. Beautiful white hair curled about his brow, while his beard and mustaches were the pink of military perfection. Florence, studying him furtively, found him very good to look upon. To her he represented romance, aristocracy, refinement—all that she had never had in her sordid life. He was too old to play Prince Charming, she concluded, but he was of the type to which she believed Prince Charming belonged.

Meanwhile the priest was seating himself. “No fairy tale. Princess,” he contradicted deferentially—“unless we liken it to Cinderella and transform the beautiful, wronged young lady into the princess. Rather let us call it a masquerade. I am not what I seem. You are not what you seem. Your whole expedition is not what it seems. We are all masked. But the time for unmasking is at hand.”

Florence stared at him languidly. “I suppose you know what you mean,” she remarked insolently. “But I don’t.”

“How should you until I explain? First, Princess, I am not a priest.”

“I knew it. What are you? A wizard?”

“I am Baron Ivan Demidroff, chief of the third section of the Russian police. Perhaps you know what that means. Your yacht has been watched ever since it entered the Baltic, and I am here for the express purpose of meeting you. If I may advise, Princess, it is not well to scoff always. This affair is not one for laughter.”

“Oh, splash! Excuse these tears of regret!” mocked the girl. “Go ahead! I’ll be good.”

For a moment the Baron studied the girl’s face. Then he shrugged his shoulders. Privately he was revising his former opinions about American training and manners. He had not met Florence’s type before.

“You have always supposed yourself the daughter of Professor Shishkin, have you not, Princess?” he questioned.

Florence dodged. “Well, I got a right to,” she answered. “He told me so himself.”

“I know. He did you a grave injustice. Listen, Princess! Twenty years ago, the man you suppose to be your father engaged in a plot to murder my imperial master the Czar. The plot was detected, and its authors were thrown into prison. Three years after, Shishkin escaped. In some way he had gotten the idea that his highness, the Grand Duke Ivan, had been responsible for his arrest. It was not true, but he believed it. So he slipped into the palace of the Grand Duke and stole away his daughter, the Princess Yves Napraxine. He escaped with her to America and passed her off as his daughter. You were that child! You were and are that princess, Yves Napraxine, daughter of the late Grand Duke Ivan, cousin to his imperial majesty the Czar, and heiress to a great fortune. All this would have been yours from birth up had not that wicked old man stolen you away and robbed you of it.”

Florence closed her eyes. She felt faint. Ever since Professor Shishkin had approached her in New York, she had been wondering to what the adventure would lead. Naturally romantic, in spite of her flippancy, she had thought out half a dozen possible terminations, the least of which left her rich and honored. But never in her wildest imaginings had she dreamed of being identified as a princess and a cousin of the Czar.

A delightful excitement raced through her veins. In imagination she was already receiving homage and declining the hands of great nobles. Then, all at once, the “pipe went out.” None of this could be hers. It all belonged to the real Olga, married and settled three thousand miles away. The truth must of course soon appear; all she could do was to get all the pleasure possible out of the situation while it lasted. Perhaps she might manage to feather her nest by that time.

Her thoughts flew to the Professor. So this was the reason why he had wanted to keep the real Olga out of Russia? He had dreaded just such a disclosure as this. Well, she would help him as long as she could—that is, as long as his interests did not clash with hers. When they did, of course——

The Baron had been watching her closely, trying to read her changing face.

“Ah ha!” he exclaimed. “You understand now perhaps some things you could not guess before. Perhaps you remember details of your childhood, almost forgotten. You were three years old when you were stolen, and some recollection sticks in your mind. Is it not so?”

“Yes, some recollection sticks in my mind.” Florence wondered grimly what the Baron would say if he knew what her recollections really were.

“The villain has robbed you of your birthright,” he repeated, with what seemed to be rising wrath. “But now it shall all be restored. Yes!”

Florence nodded, not trusting herself to speak. The situation was too new and strange, and she must move circumspectly. Besides, she was certain the Baron had more to say. She had been taught in a hard school, and was very sure that his actions were not disinterested. So she merely waited.

Baron Demidroff did not delay. “Yes,” he reiterated. “It shall all be restored, and the robber shall be punished. But there is more to tell, Princess. To whom, think you, belongs the gold for which the Sea Spume is seeking?”

“What gold?” Florence looked innocently into the Baron’s eyes. She would admit nothing until compelled to do so.

“What gold? Mon Dieu, Princess, do you think we police are fools? Every step of the so-called Miss Fitzhugh and of Monsieur Caruth has been known to us. Almost we captured the letter on the fire-escape in New York. But Monsieur le valet was too cunning for us.”

Florence raised her eyes. “So,” she murmured thoughtfully, “it was your agents who murdered Wilkins?”

“Executed him, Princess. He was a robber and a murderer, with a long criminal record. We knew him well. His robbery of Monsieur Caruth was his last crime. My men observed him from the fire-escape and acted summarily. That is all.”

Florence did not understand half of this. She had been told nothing of Wilkins’s murder, her only knowledge being inferred from what his brother had said to her about it three days before. She laid away in her mind the information the Baron so freely imparted, and waited.

“So you let the letter get by you,” she suggested.

The Baron flung up his hands. “Alas, yes, Princess. But we watched and waited, and when Miss Fitzhugh organized her little expedition, we guessed that she had somehow gotten the letter. But, mademoiselle, revenons à nos moulons! Do you know whose gold it is they seek?”

Florence shook her head.

“It is yours! Yes, Princess, I swear it. Your illustrious father had never given up the hope of finding you, and when he died, ten years ago, his will directed that his estate should be set aside for you or be spent in seeking for you. When Russia’s needs became great owing to the war with Japan, my imperial master directed that money be borrowed for the government on your English estates. If you were found, he would pay it back; if you were not found, the estate would in time revert to the Crown. That gold was carried by the Orkney, wrecked by the nihilists, and is now being stolen from you by your pretended father and his rascally associates. It makes one’s blood boil, Princess!”

For obvious reasons, Florence’s blood did not boil quite so ardently as the Baron’s seemed to do. Plainly he was trying to excite her animosity against the members of her party, for reasons not yet disclosed, but not difficult to guess in a general way. She was sure that he was preparing to ask her to play traitor, and she was debating inwardly whether or not she would find it profitable to do so.

“It’s a real fervent tale,” she remarked encouragingly. “Gee! wouldn’t it make a hit on the ten-twent’-thirt’ circuit. Think of the Czarski doing the hands-across-the-sea act to an American girl! By the way, I forgot how you said you found me!”

Baron Demidroff hesitated. “It is a long story,” he boggled. “We got a hint from a friend of ours in the nihilist councils, and we followed it up. The proofs were completed only after your party sailed from America. The last Unit came by cable a few days ago.”

Florence rose. “Well,” she said, “if it satisfies you, I certainly ain’t got any kick coming. But I guess you’d better get down to brass tacks and be done with it. Do I get this estate and princely rank, or don’t I? Talk business! I’m no ingénue.”

The Baron’s eyes lighted up. At last he thought he understood. He rose. “Ah!” he exclaimed. “You will treat with us! That is well. You will get everything if you help us! We want that gold. The Emperor is responsible to you for it, and he has charged us to recover it. Is it in the Inlet here?”

“You can search me!”

“What?”

“Oh, gee, I don’t know! Nobody knows! They’re hunting for it here, but I don’t think they’re certain it ain’t somewhere else.”

“Didn’t the letter tell?”

“I haven’t seen any letter.”

“Ah!” The Baron was disappointed. “Well, no matter!” he went on. “You can help me nevertheless. Let me know when they find it, and I will do the rest. The moment it is in my hands, I will hand you the proofs that will make you a princess and give you a fortune of forty million rubles—twenty million American dollars. Will you help us?”

Florence shivered with delight. If she were clever, she might coax some of those twenty millions to come her way. But matters were still decidedly vague.

“Why can’t you seize the yacht now?” she asked. “Why do you need my help?”

“My dear young lady!” the Baron exclaimed. “We do not know where the wreck is! We do not know that she is in this inlet at all. It may be for a blind that the yacht comes here. If we seize her before she finds the gold, we know nothing and we get nothing. Mr. Caruth he draw himself up. ‘Ah ha!’ he cries. ‘You insult the American flag!’ The American newspapers raise the—the war-whoop—and we—we can answer nothing. We have no proof. But when the gold is once aboard, we get it and we can catch Mr. Caruth red-handed. He is caught stealing our gold. He can say nothing. If he makes trouble, the American papers are dumb or they take our side. Russia’s friendship with America is not disturbed. It is only a pirate that is caught. Ah, no, no, Princess. We must proceed slowly. We must know our ground before we move. We must wait until the gold is found. Now what say you?”

Florence considered. Clearly, nothing was to be gained by refusing the Baron outright. She must have time to decide on her course of action. If it appeared best to betray the yacht, she would not hesitate to do so; but she had no intention of playing the traitor unless she saw her profit. She must study over the situation. Meanwhile, she would appear to accept.

“All right,” she said briefly. “I’ll go with you. I’ll let you know when the gold is found. How’ll I do it?”

If Baron Demidroff was gratified, he did not show it. He was no longer treating Florence as a girl, but as a woman and a fellow conspirator.

“Your stateroom is the second on the port side, I believe,” he said tersely. “Very well. When the gold is found, hang a small red flag from your port-hole or show a red light there by night. It is understood? Yes? But your friend approaches. Adieu, Madame la Princesse!”

As he walked up the aisle toward the altar, Miss Lee rose to greet Wilkins. “Gee!” she exclaimed. “Let’s get back on board. This place is as dead as a puddle duckski!”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

THREE days after Florence’s adventure at the church, that young woman sat on the quarter-deck of the Sea Spume, gazing with unseeing eyes over the lapping water which the descending sun had turned into a golden river stretching away to the west. Upon this yellow flood two boats were moving, and on these Miss Lee’s eyes were fixed.

But her thoughts were far away. Not once since Baron Demidroff had told his amazing tale had its substance been out of her ears. Again and again she had gone over the details, wondering if by any chance she could make the fairy tale come true.

In time she almost persuaded herself that she could. She was sure that she understood at last why the Professor had not wanted to bring his daughter to Russia. He had been afraid of this very thing—afraid lest Olga’s relatives should find her and reclaim her. More than ever now, he would want to keep the substitution secret. And no one else knew of it.

Florence’s heart leaped within her as the possibilities danced before her mind’s eye. Let her only dare to go ahead and she would have money and wealth. Why not?

A princess! Sharply she drew her breath at the thought. A princess! She! Florence Lee! She who had faced beggary a few short weeks before! Princess Yves Napraxine! Princess Yves Napraxine! Again and again she wrote the words on the flyleaf of a book that lay in her lap. Princess Yves Napraxine! If it could be! If it could be!

A step on the deck aroused her. Hastily she closed the book, with its tell-tale writing, and looked up to see Wilkins close at hand.

Rapidly he strode to the rail and gazed toward the boats; then he turned abruptly back and sat down beside the girl.

“They’re getting mighty contiguous,” he declared. “I reckon they’ll oscillate on it to-night. Well, it don’t matter; everything’s ready.”

Curiously Miss Lee gazed at him. “What in the world are you talking about?” she demanded.

Wilkins withdrew his eyes from the dancing water and fixed them on the girl. For a moment he looked her in the face; then he deliberately winked.

Miss Lee struck at him. “Don’t get fresh,” she ordered severely. “I don’t allow gentlemen to wink at me except over a cold bottle. Speak out and quit making signs.”

Wilkins chuckled. “Say! You’re all to the good,” he remarked. “I’m ready if you are.”

“Ready for what?”

“To foreclose on that there promissory note of yourn—that one about the gold. I’m ready to start for New York if you are. Fact is, I’m off to-night!”

“To-night!”

“Sure thing! It’s me for the broad Atlantic by the light of the moon this very night. Say, don’t you want to shake this gang and come along?”

The girl paled slightly. “Tell me what you mean right away,” she ordered crisply.

Wilkins pointed over the water. “You see that right-hand boat pronouncin’ around yonder?” he questioned. “Well, near’s my specification goes, the Orkney lies just about under her. Unless they’re too terrible promiscuous, they’ll find her mighty soon, and then there’ll be goings on worse’n a locoed bronco.”

“How do you know?” The girl was leaning over him, every muscle tense with excitement. “How do you know where the Orkney is, and why will there be trouble when it is found?” she demanded.

“Because—say, I guess you didn’t see a slim, limpy fellow with a black hirsute adornment on his chin up in the village the day we was up there, did you? Well, that fellow was Bill, my brother Bill, the one that wrote the epizootle that brung us here. He wasn’t drowned in the Orkney—Bill wasn’t born to be drowned. Everybody else was, but he got on terra cotta, and he’s been hibernating here ever since, waiting his chance to get away with the gold.”

“The gold!”

“Yes! Bill’s got it. How he done it, I don’t know. But he’s got it. Bill’s a man of his hands, Bill is! He’s got all them nuggets out of the ship and cached ’em ashore. There ain’t a speck of dust left on the Orkney. Bill’s got it all!”

Amazement gripped Florence and held her dumb. The gold whose capture was to be the price of proofs of her princesshood had passed into other hands. What was she to do? There was no time to lose. Should she betray Wilkins to Caruth or to the Baron? How could she betray him to the Baron even if she wanted to? Should she grasp at the money and let the visionary rank go. She did not question whether she should be true to Professor Shishkin. Long before, she had decided that question.

Abruptly she spoke. “Well, what are you going to do?” she demanded.

“Going to run the gold off, of course,” returned the plainsman. “Bill’s got a boat of sorts—a schooner or pergola or something—and he’s got the gold on board by now. I’ve staked him to buy provisions, and we’re off to-night. Bill would have gone before, but he’s been crippled up since the wreck, and couldn’t manage the boat alone. But it’s all skeeky now. The scow’s lying up here a ways, just a-waiting for dark and for you and me to join her. If it coincides with your sentiments, we’ll do the fly away act to-night. Will you come?”

Miss Lee considered. Of course it would be delightful to be a princess, but, after all, there might be a string tied to Demidroff’s offer, while there was something substantial about five million dollars in gold. It might be well to pass up the fairy tale and close with Wilkins. She must consider.

“You can’t cross the Atlantic in a sloop,” she objected.

“Ain’t going to try. We’ll just run over the way to Stockholm to a place Bill knows of, and go home from there by steamer. Oh, we’ve got it all diagnosed out proper. It’s a cinch.”

“But”—Florence was thinking aloud—“how are you goin’ to get away from the yacht?”

“That’s fixed, too. Bill will float down under the cabin windows about ten o’clock, just before the moon gets on the job, and we’ll drop in on him.”

“But when they find we’re gone——”

“Let ’em find. What difference does it make? They may aspirate to get this here gold, but that don’t make it theirs. Bill and me’s got it, and I guess we’ll keep it. Why, say, there ain’t one of ’em’ll dare to baa even if they find us, which they won’t. Oh, it’s a cinch.”

“Perhaps! And yet—say, Mr. Wilkins, you’ve been on the level with me, and I’m going to treat you likewise. Don’t you be too sure you’ve got a cinch! There’s others besides the folks on this yacht that’s after that gold.”

Wilkins did not speak, but he looked the girl in the eye and waited for her to go on.

“The Russian cops are onto their jobs all right. They know what we’re after, and they’re watching us all the time. They’re ready to swoop down on us the minute we get the gold on board. I guess they’ve got a dozen boats lying around here.”

Wilkins looked thoughtful. “Humph!” he said. “You’re all to the good, you are. You ain’t been wasting no time, have you? How’d you find out?”

“The priest! That day at the church. He wanted me to help him.”

“And you strung him along, all right, didn’t you? You would, of course!” He paused, then went on. “Well,” he remarked; “I don’t reckon it makes no difference. They won’t be suspecting a fishing schooner of any allusions, and they won’t be aggravatin’ us none. They’ll be keepin’ their optics trained on the yacht circumspectious. We can slip out easy. Is it a go?”

Florence held out her hand. “It’s a go,” she agreed. “More! I’ll help you to get away. I’ll fix things so that the yacht won’t have any time to bother us. Yes, it’s a go. And now——”

Swiftly Florence opened the book that lay in her lap and ripped out the flyleaf with its princely inscription. Swiftly she tore it into tiny fragments and tossed it to the breeze that sang through the rigging. “There!” she cried, as the bits besprinkled the water. “That’s the end of the Princess Yves Napraxine. It’s a go.”

“The Princess which?”

“Somebody you never heard of. A bird in the bush. A dream of the impossible. A romance from the Chambermaid’s Own. Let her go. I’ll be ready when you are.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

THAT night the wreck was found. Seated in the cabin, close beside the telephone that led over the side down to the divers toiling beneath the darkening water, Caruth received the thrilling news.

Instantly hoarse orders rang through the ship, and the crew sprang to their stations. The furnace doors were flung open and brawny stokers hurled coal upon the banked fires until the hiss of steam told that the Sea Spume was ready to race for the open sea the moment the gold was on board.

Below, the divers were picking their way over the sunken hull, seeking the storage place of the treasure.

Above, at the telephones, stood Caruth and Marie Fitzhugh, cheeks flushed and eyes a-sparkle.

“At last! At last!” breathed the girl; and “At last! At last!” echoed Caruth.

His tones penetrated to the girl’s consciousness, and she blushed brightly. In the triumph of her cause, she had forgotten that Caruth’s object and hers were not the same.

She blushed, but she did not draw away. After all, if she were fated to give herself for Russia, to sell herself to Caruth in return for his help in the cause of freedom, the sacrifice would not be so very hard. Indeed, it might not be hard at all. If policy were to govern her mating, this clean-limbed, clean-thinking young American would be a better mate than many a one who had sought her in the past. The Brotherhood must decide; she had sworn herself body and soul to its orders; but she found herself suddenly hoping that the Brotherhood might find Caruth’s claims worthy.

Smilingly she looked into the young man’s eyes. “Not yet,” she murmured. “Not yet. We are not out of the woods yet, and until we are you must remember your promise.”

“My promise?”

“To give all your thoughts to the business in hand. Not to make love to me. Not to——”

“Great Cæsar’s Ghost! You don’t call this making love, do you? With you half a mile away across the cabin, and me with this telephone harness on my head. Just you wait and——” Excitedly he devoured her with his eyes.

Brightly she blushed, and restlessly she moved. Then she pressed a button on the wall. “I am going to send for Mr. Wilkins and Miss Shishkin to come and hear the news with us,” she explained. “We owe Mr. Wilkins an apology for distrusting him.”

When the steward entered, she sent him to find the two and ask them to come to the cabin.

When the man had gone, Caruth looked at her and laughed. “Yes,” he agreed, “I guess I owe Wilkins an apology, but I could make it later just as well as now. I’m inclined to think that Miss Shishkin has had more to do with his good faith than anything else, anyhow. Queer girl, isn’t she, to be the Professor’s daughter. Not the sort I should have expected at all.”

“Nor I. However—— Well, Barnes, what is it?”

The steward had entered, hastily. “Mr. Wilkins and Miss Shishkin don’t seem to be aboard, ma’am!” he exclaimed.

“Not aboard? Nonsense! They must be!”

“I’ve hunted everywhere, ma’am. I’ve looked in Miss Shishkin’s cabin, ma’am, and she ain’t there. There weren’t nothing there but a red light burning in the port-hole, ma’am.”

Caruth sprang to his feet, tearing the telephone-receiver from his head. “A red light? Man, you’re crazy!”

“No, sir; I ain’t, sir. There was a lantern wrapped round with a red cloth burning in her port-hole. And she’s gone, sir. She ain’t on board, sir; and Mr. Wilkins ain’t on board either.”

For an instant Marie and Caruth stared at the man in dumb silence. Then the girl realized the situation. “Treachery!” she cried. “Treachery! Wilkins has betrayed us! I never trusted him. He’s betrayed us, and he’s carried the girl off.”

“Carried her off? It’s impossible!”

“Impossible or not, it’s been done. Maybe she went with him willingly—I don’t know and I don’t care. She’s gone, and he’s gone, and there’s danger in it! Danger! It means we are watched. It means we’ll be attacked——”

“Attacked?”

“Yes, attacked! Do you think Russia will try to arrest us? She couldn’t! We are within our rights. We are only seeking salvage. She won’t dare to arrest us. She’ll send ruffians to attack us and kill or imprison us all. The Sea Spume will disappear as the Orkney did. No one will ever hear of it again. Quick! For God’s sake, give me that telephone! I’ll stay here. Go and find Captain Wilson! Serve out arms. Prepare to fight; for, as God is my judge, we will have to fight or perish. Don’t I know Russia and its police? Quick! The murderers may be creeping on us now.”

In three steps Caruth was on deck, and in three more on the bridge at Captain Wilson’s side. Eagerly he poured out his story.

“If the police come for us openly, we must yield,” he finished. “But Miss Fitzhugh says they will not come openly. She says they will come as pirates, thieves, murderers. If they do, we must fight for our lives. We’re armed and——”

“We’ll do it! I’ll give orders.” The captain was gone with the words trailing over his shoulders.

The Sea Spume had been bought and fitted out as a dispatch boat by the United States Government at the breaking out of the Spanish war. At its close, she had been sold, guns and all, to the highest bidder; since then she had changed hands once or twice, but none of her owners had dismantled her. Finally Caruth, who had served on her during the war with other boy members of the Naval Militia, had bought her and had brought her up almost to a man-of-war pitch. When he had started for Russia, he had needed to add only a little ammunition to put the yacht in condition to cope with anything of her tonnage.

This armament was now to stand the adventurers in good stead. Caruth, watching from the bridge, saw the wave of excitement ripple along the vessel at the captain’s low-spoken commands; saw the tarpaulins jerked from the guns, revealing the long black muzzles of the six-pound rapid-firers; heard the splutter of the search-light as the men tested its connection, and the rattle of the hoists as the fixed ammunition, cartridge-like in ease of handling, was brought upon the deck.

Suddenly all lights went out, and the Sea Spume became only a darker spot in the opaque blackness of the night. Simultaneously fell silence, profound and tomblike!

Ghost-like, Captain Wilson mounted the bridge. “Everything’s ready,” he reported in scarcely audible tones. “If anybody comes for us now, they’ll get a warm reception. The men are crazy for a scrap.”

“Good! This means double pay all round, Captain. You might pass the word. I’m going to the cabin now to find out what news there is from the divers. Miss Fitzhugh is at the telephone.”

But Caruth was not to go to the telephone then. As his foot poised above the first step of the companionway, from the bows a shrill challenge came.

“Boat ahoy! Boat ahoy! What boat is that?”

No answer came. But out in the darkness a voice uplifted itself in short but swift command, intelligible by its tone if not by its syllables. Unseen men responded with an eager cheer, followed by a splash of oars in the water.

“The search-light! Quick!” shouted Captain Wilson, and at the word the electric sword glimmered through the darkness, illuminating the black water, and illuminating too, a score of boats, loaded with men, dashing upon the yacht.

Small time was there for parley. “Aim! Fire!” yelled the captain; and the flames of the guns split the darkness, while their thunders echoed back from the cliffs that towered close beside.

“Fire at will!” yelled Wilson, again; and again the guns roared, not all together as before, but in a pitter-patter of rattling sound. Swiftly the search-light circled, picking out the boats for an instant as vivid bull’s-eyes for the concentration of the yacht’s fire; dancing away again to some fresh point.

The yachtsmen were poor gunners, but at that range they could not miss. The revolving search-light soon showed an inextricable tangle of boats, drifting or turning unbalanced athwart the course of their companions, with oars dropping from dead fingers and men plunging limply after them into the embrace of the tide. Other boats showed for an instant in the glare, then sank beneath the shimmering water. But past and through all these, others kept their way, intent only on coming to hand-grips with the men of the yacht. In the gaps of sound, the same ringing voice still sounded, as the unseen commander incited his men to fresh efforts.

For a moment fate hung in the balance. Then, as Caruth, pistol in hand, leaped down from the ladder to join in repelling the boarders who seemed about to swarm over the taffrail, the tide turned. The Russians, overtaxed, bewildered, hesitated and fled, some by boat, some by swimming; those who had gained the yacht’s shrouds leaped back in panic, careless whether planks or the Baltic lay beneath them.

Captain Wilson’s deep voice rang out. “Cease firing!” he shouted. “Cease firing!”

Silence followed storm. Then out of the night came a flash and a roar. A jet of ruddy flame shot from the cliff side toward the Sea Spume and the skylight above the saloon vanished in a rain of splinters and flying glass. The search-light, flung to port, showed, high up on the cliffs, two heavy guns, armed and manned.

Stupefied, the yachtsmen stared at them, unmoving, till again came a flash and a report and a rending roar as the yacht quivered to the impact of a shell.

Captain Wilson woke to life. “Fire on that battery!” he yelled. “Mr. Caruth, get those divers up. We can’t stay here.”

Blood flecked Caruth’s lip where he had bitten it through. “What!” he cried. “Run away and leave the gold to them? I won’t do it.”

“You must!”

“I won’t. I’ll——”

A hand fell on the young man’s arm. Marie Fitzhugh stood beside him.

“The gold is gone,” she moaned.

“Gone!”

“Yes! The strong room on the Orkney has been broken open. The boxes are there, but they are empty. Some one has been before us. The gold is gone.”

“Impossible.”

“It’s true. I ordered the divers on board. They are coming over the side now. We must flee. Quick, Captain! Full speed ahead.”

The engine bells clanged, and the yacht shook to the throb of the screws. Rapidly she gathered way. Another shot from the battery on the cliff hissed over her, and still another went wide. Then a turn in the channel shielded her from farther danger.

It was not until half an hour later that it was learned that Professor Shishkin had disappeared.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

AT full speed and without lights, the Sea Spume rushed through the darkness, threading her way among the islands by the faint light of the stars reflected from the dancing water. Her course was perilous in the extreme. At any moment an unseen rock might rise in the way and bring her to hopeless ruin. But delay was more perilous than rocks, and the Sea Spume sped breathlessly on.

Marie Fitzhugh was responsible both for the speed and the course. As the yacht dashed from the inlet into open water and veered southward, she climbed to the bridge where Captain Wilson and Caruth were standing.

“North! North, for your life, Captain!” she cried.

Captain Wilson grasped the engine-room indicator. “Why north?” he demanded. “Stockholm lies southwest.”

“We can never reach Stockholm. What! Do you think escape is to be so easily made? No! Russia has gone too far to stop now. The path to the west and south—the path to any foreign port—is guarded. To the north and east lies our only chance.”

Captain Wilson hesitated, but Caruth took control. “North, please. Captain,” he commanded; “and as fast as you dare.”

An instant more and the Sea Spume swept round, heading northward around Burndo. As it turned, the girl spoke again.

“I think their plan was to have us looted unofficially,” she said, “and then, after they had gotten the gold, to shoot a lot of the looters to satisfy international conditions. But unless they are fools, they must have prepared for just what has happened. If half a dozen torpedo-boats are not hunting for us this very minute, I miss my guess. Why they were not waiting for us at the mouth of the inlet, I can’t for the life of me understand, but if we get to port without chancing on them, we shall be luckier than I dare hope. They’ll never let us get away with the gold—and of course they must think we have it.”

“The gold! Who has got it?”

But instead of answering, the girl, with a half-choked sob, hurried down the ladder, leaving the two men alone.

Caruth hesitated for a moment, yearning to follow and comfort her, yet uncertain whether it would be best to do so.

Captain Wilson’s voice aroused him. “We’ll be round the island in half an hour or more,” he said gruffly. “Which way shall I head then?”

Caruth shook his head. “I don’t know, Captain,” he confessed. “I’ll talk with Miss Fitzhugh, and see what she thinks.”

“Might as well, I reckon. She’s got more brains than most women.”

Swiftly Caruth descended to the cabin and there, as he had expected, he found the girl who had been the inspiration of the whole trip.

Seated at the table in the cabin of the Sea Spume, Marie faced the ruin of her hopes. Indeed, she faced more. For, as she had descended from the bridge, one of the divers met her and commanded her, by an authority she could not dispute, to report at once to the Inner Circle of the Brotherhood, to explain the causes of her failure. Well she knew what such an order meant, and for the first time in her life she shrank from the ordeal.

At that moment Caruth came upon her. Never, even in her brief period of exaltation of a few hours before, had she appealed to him as in this time of abasement. Stricken by the realization of what had been and what must be, she yet held her head proudly erect, though its poise suggested, not triumph, but the grand air with which nobles rode in the tumbrels to the guillotine. Her violet eyes were deep as ever, but in their depths lay a pathetic softness, as of a child grieving over some disappointment which it was too young to understand. When Caruth, with throbbing heart, strode forward and took her in his arms, she melted all at once upon his shoulder.

Gently he stroked her dark hair. “There, there, sweetheart,” he murmured. “Cheer up! Everything isn’t lost! We’ll live to triumph yet.”

But the girl sobbed on hopelessly, her slender form shaking with emotion, until Caruth grew frightened.

“It’s all right, sweetheart,” he murmured again. “Don’t take it so hard. It isn’t worth it, after all. Come, dear, cheer up! There are other things in the world besides plots and plotting. Marry me at the first port we touch. Then, later, we can help your cause all you like.”

Gently the girl freed herself and stood alone. On her fair skin the color deepened from neck to temples; her wet eyes glistened. A lock of hair had escaped and trailed down over her forehead; she put it back mechanically.

“No,” she said gently. “No, it can never be.”

“Never!” Once more Caruth caught her in his arms. “Never!” he shouted. “By Heaven! I swear it shall be!” Hotly he showered kisses upon her hair, her face, her lips.

She did not resist. For the moment she could not. A sense of intoxication numbed her faculties. “Oh!” she breathed. “I did not know that it was so sweet—so sweet!”

“Yes, dear; it is sweet. And it will continue sweet through all the years to come. Can you not see those years, dear one? Each with its own peculiar happiness, yet each the same—for we shall be the same. Yes, it is sweet, Marie.”

Slowly the girl raised her face, and the tragedy in her eyes appalled him. There was love in them, love unutterable, but there was misery, too, misery, hopeless, unspeakable. “I thank God!” she said slowly. “I thank him for this moment. Whatever comes, I thank him that he has given me to know the love of a good man. See what it has done for me. A little while ago I was afraid, afraid, afraid. But now I fear no longer. I do not care what happens now.”

“And you will marry me at the first port?”

Slowly the girl shook her head. She still rested in his embrace, her dark eyes fixed on his. “No,” she murmured. “No! I cannot.”

Dismay swept over Caruth. “But——” he began.

Gently she laid her fingers on his lips. “If it could be,” she whispered—“if it could be, I would count the world well lost. But it cannot be. Don’t you understand, dear? I am vowed to help the people, the poor, down-trodden people, who cannot help themselves—who can only suffer. I cannot desert them. I am sworn to them by vows as holy as those of any nun. Success might have won release, but I have failed.”

Caruth straightened himself indignantly. “Failed nothing!” he cried. “You’ve not failed. There is no failure where there is no chance of success. The gold must have been gone before you ever saw New York—before you ever heard of the matter at all. You’ve done more than any one else could have done, for you’ve found the ship and explored her. It isn’t your fault that somebody was before you.”

Marie freed herself gently. “It isn’t a question of fault,” she answered sadly. “It is a question of success, and I have not succeeded. But, even so, I fear it really is my fault. It would not be if you were right—if the gold had indeed been taken when you say. But I don’t think it was so taken. I believe it was there when we left New York, even when we arrived at Burndo. I feel that it was snatched away under my very eyes. It was—— Good Heavens! What’s the matter?”

For Caruth, suddenly weak, had dropped into a chair. For the first time he had recalled the words of the interpreter in the village. “Great Scott!” he cried, “you are right. Why didn’t I think? Why didn’t I guess? Fool, dolt, ass, that I am! I know who got the gold.”

“Who?” Marie leaned forward with parted lips.

“The interpreter in the village. I told you something of him, but I didn’t tell you enough. I didn’t realize what it meant. I was a fool. He talked of something—some gold mine, he said—that he needed help to secure. He offered me a share. Then Wilkins came up and he ran. By Heavens! I see it all now. He knew Wilkins! He ran away to avoid explaining. And I thought he was crazy! Oh, what an incredible idiot I was!”

“It was fated!”

“Fated nothing! It was plain idiocy. Oh, I see it all now! Wilkins and he arranged it all. It’s they that have the gold.”

“They and that girl.”

Caruth’s face clouded. “Do you think so?” he questioned “She——”

“Oh, I know all you would say. She is the Professor’s daughter and all that; but she has fled with Wilkins all the same. Trust a woman to know. She has gone away with him willingly.”

“And the Professor?”

The girl’s eyes filled with tears. “Oh, the poor old man!” she cried. “The poor old man! So courteous, so sweet, so kindly. I never knew my father—he died when I was an infant—but I like to think that if he had lived he would have been like the Professor.”

“Then you don’t think he has gone with his daughter?”

“What! Gone with her? Never! Why, he was on board long after they had disappeared. He must have been knocked overboard in the fight.”

Caruth nodded. “I agree with you, of course,” he responded. “No one could suspect the old man, even if circumstances were against him, which they are not. But what of the others? Do you think they will escape?”

“For the moment perhaps. Not for long. I did not speak idly when I warned Wilkins in New York. Neither he nor the girl will live to enjoy the fruits of their treachery.” Dangerously the dark eyes flashed.

Caruth shuddered. “You wouldn’t set the nihilists on them?” he protested blankly.

“There is no need. Think you I could screen them if I would! No! I am not the only member of the Order on board. The Brotherhood has its agents everywhere. At this very moment, it probably understands better than we what has happened. Who should know its methods if not I? We shall all have to answer for our failure—I, Professor Shishkin if he lives, and, most of all, his daughter and her lover. I have already been summoned before the Inner Circle. The order was given me ten minutes ago.”

She paused, hesitated for a moment, then raised her head proudly. “We have all made our beds,” she declared. “Let us lie in them. I, for one, shall not flinch. What port is the yacht heading for?”

The moment for sentiment had passed, and the girl was herself again, cold, clear-headed, self-reliant. Caruth realized the fact and bowed to it.

“I came to consult you about that,” he explained. “We are about around the islands now, and must decide on our course. Where shall we go?”

“There is but one place. St. Petersburg.”

“St. Petersburg?”

“Yes. We can be there by daylight to-morrow, and by breakfast you can reach your ambassador.”

“What for?”

“What for?” echoed the girl amazedly. “What for? Your yacht, a private American yacht, engaged in a lawful occupation, has been attacked and fired on in Russian waters. Three of her passengers, one of them a distinguished scientist, have disappeared. You must complain; appeal to your ambassador; demand the identification and punishment of the offenders. Things like that cannot be done with impunity, even by Russia, unless they succeed so fully that they blot out their own traces. This time some one has blundered, and they will strive desperately to retrieve themselves. If you attempted to seek another port, you would find yourself denounced as a criminal who had fired on inoffensive fishing-boats. No! No! The boldest course is the best. Take the bull by the horns. Run to St. Petersburg, and have the ambassador present the case to the Czar in person. Once your complaint is filed, you are at least safe from murder.”

Caruth nodded. The advice was good. “I’ll tell the captain,” he acceded. “Now promise me you will try to get some sleep.”

Marie laughed cheerlessly. “Oh, yes, I’ll try,” she promised; “but I feel as if I should never sleep again.”

When Caruth reached the deck, the night was far gone, and streaks of light were already glimmering in the east. Not being in the mood for sleep, he stayed and watched the dawn come up.

Uneventfully the moments sped past, and at last the golden ball of the sun lifted itself above the horizon, sending long lances of light ricocheting over the dancing waters.

There was a twang in the air; the salt sea breeze thrummed in the rigging; in spite of himself, Caruth caught the uplift of the day. All was not hopeless, he told himself, with the buoyancy of his youth and his race, to which all things are possible. He had lost the first inning. “I’ll win her yet!” he cried aloud. “I’ll win her yet.”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

THIRTY-SIX hours later the Sea Spume lay in harbor at St. Petersburg, and Caruth had told his story to the American Chargé d’Affaires, who was conducting matters in the absence of the ambassador. As he stepped out of the office of the Chargé, he heard his name called in wondering tones.

The accents seemed familiar, and he whirled round. Then he started in amazement and held out his hand.

“Great Scott, Bristow!” he cried. “Where on earth did you spring from?”

The reporter grinned back at him. “Seems kind of funny, doesn’t it?” he answered. “But, shucks, this is a small world nowadays, and you oughtn’t to be surprised at meeting anybody.”

Caruth disregarded the persiflage. “Well!” he declared heartily. “I don’t know any man in the world I’d rather see. Your arrival is a regular Godsend. How did it come about?”

“Most natural thing in the world. The Consolidated Press man at St. Petersburg has been wanting for a year or two to come home on a long vacation, but they never could spare him. A few weeks ago, when things were quieter than they had been for some time, I asked them to send me over to relieve him. When I told them I could speak a little Russian, they agreed right away. I left New York two days after you did.”

“I didn’t know you wanted to come to Russia.”

The reporter grinned. “I didn’t know it either a month ago,” he responded. “But I got married and——”

“Married? Good for you! Accept congratulations!”

“Thank you. My wife wanted to visit Russia in a hurry, and so—here we are. But that’s enough about me. How about yourself? There’s an incendiary tale afloat about your doings. Any truth in it?”

“Too much! Come over here and sit down, and I’ll tell you the whole story.”

Rapidly, Caruth poured his tale into the reporter’s sympathetic ears. He kept nothing back, as he had done in his first talk in New York. He told about Wilkins’s arrival; explained about the letters; and sketched rapidly the organization and the departure of the expedition and the events, so far as he knew them, that had taken place at Burndo Island.

“The situation is all in a muddle,” he ended. “I suppose Wilkins got away with the gold, though I can’t imagine how he did it. And I suppose the Professor was knocked overboard and drowned. But I can’t understand what has become of the girl.”

Bristow leaned back in his chair. “If I remember correctly,” he premised slowly, “I favored you in New York with certain moralizations on the way events fit in together. I’ll add to that now that if you hunt back far enough, you can find a common cause for a good many events that at first blush seem unrelated. You don’t know it, of course, but I have a direct personal interest in this affair. You see, I have known Professor Shishkin and his daughter for several years. In fact, Miss Shishkin is now my wife.”

“What!” Caruth half rose from his seat.

“Take it easy! I don’t mean that the girl you had on board this yacht is my wife. God forbid! As a matter of fact, that lady is not Professor Shishkin’s daughter at all. She is an alleged actress, drafted from the music hall stage by the Professor and cast for the part of his daughter. Now perhaps you begin to see a glimmer of light.”

But Caruth shook his head. “No, I don’t,” he returned. “Why should Professor Shishkin palm off somebody else as his daughter? It’s all a tangle of fraud and deceit. You go on and explain, please. My brain is buzzing.”

“It’s simple enough. The nihilists had ordered the Professor to bring his daughter with him on this trip, and he didn’t want to do it. Just why he objected, I’m not sure, though I have my suspicions; but he did object most strenuously. But he didn’t dare to refuse either to go on this expedition or to take his daughter. He was half mad when I went to him and asked for Olga. To cut it short, he agreed that I might marry her if I would find a substitute who looked like her and who would go in her place. I did find such a substitute in the person of Miss Florence Lee, the lady who accompanied your expedition. She was always a cold-blooded, calculating piece, for all her mask of flippancy, and I guess she and Wilkins framed it up between them to sell out. Now do you see?”

“Yes, I see.” Caruth spoke heavily. “Why didn’t you put me on?” he asked. “If I had known, I might have prevented all this.”

“You couldn’t have prevented it. I’m absolutely certain that your expedition has been watched, almost from the first. It was madness for Miss Fitzhugh to think she could succeed. Besides, you didn’t take me into your confidence or ask my advice; and, even if you had, I should probably have been compelled to keep silence for the sake of my wife and father-in-law. For—make no mistake about this, Caruth—what I have told you must go no further. The Professor may be dead, as you suppose, but Olga is alive, and I don’t want to draw any nihilist vengeance on her. You mustn’t talk.”

“I won’t.”

“The situation is reasonably clear now, isn’t it, except about how those fellows got the gold and where they have taken it? But I guess you’d better put the gold out of your mind. Wherever it is, it is out of reach, and a good thing, too. Of course, as a matter of salvage, the finder of an abandoned wreck is entitled to the bigger part of her value. But when the finders have deliberately brought about the wreck, the ethics of the case get mixed. I think you’ll be glad some day that you missed it.”

“Perhaps! If I get the girl! Not unless. Great Scott, Bristow. I’d do worse than steal for Marie’s sake! You’ve just been married yourself, and you know how it is.”

Bristow grinned. “So it’s got to the ‘Marie’ point, now, has it? By the way, where is the lady?”

“Gone! The moment we got here, she left the ship, saying that she had been summoned before the Inner Circle—whatever that is.”

Bristow whistled softly. “I suppose you will wait for her to return?” he questioned.

“I shall. I have nothing else to wait for. The whole trip has been a flat failure, and there is nothing for me to do but to sneak back to New York with my tail between my legs. I wouldn’t mind if she would go with me, but I fear——”

His voice died gloomily away.

Bristow laughed unfeelingly. “Well,” he said, “others have failed before and will fail hereafter. You aren’t the only one. And—though you may not believe it—‘men have died and worms have eaten them, but not for love.’ Things will seem brighter after awhile. Have you found out who she is yet?”

Caruth shook his head. “I don’t care,” he answered frankly. “She told me her mother was an American, and—oh, well, she is she. That’s enough.”

“I might find out for you,” suggested the reporter. “I’ve got sources of information that most men haven’t. I’ve only been here a short while, but I’ve learned a lot about the nihilists. Forbes, my predecessor here, established relations with them and built up a wonderful news system, to which, of course, I have fallen heir.”

“Do the nihilists trust you?”

“Certainly. Revolutionists all over the world trust American newspaper men. It’s positively marvellous how the most secretive conspirator will put his life in our hands. It speaks pretty well for the profession.”

“It does.”

“I can use my pull to find out who your charmer is, if you like?”

But Caruth shook his head. “No,” he said slowly. “If she had wanted me to know, she would have told me. Thank you; but—never mind.”

“Just as you like. I’ve got to look my nihilist friends up, any way, to see if they have any news from Burndo. Their system of communication beats the government’s sometimes.”

“How can it?”

“Search me! But I know that it does. Information seems to travel faster underground than it does in the air. The only trouble is that it’s spotty—not complete. A man may know every detail of one circumstance and be totally ignorant of another that you’d think he couldn’t help but know. But tell me once more about the Professor—when and how you last saw him. Olga will be in despair over his death. I suppose you can’t give me any hope?”

Caruth shook his head. He could give none. Everything seemed to point to the Professor having been knocked overboard and lost. If not, he must have been captured, and this seemed improbable under the circumstances. Caruth explained all this, going over the circumstances again and again.

At last the reporter nodded. “I’m afraid it’s good-night for the poor old fellow,” he concluded sadly. “It’s some comfort that he never knew that his plan failed. Yes, I guess it’s good-by.” The reporter rose. “Well, I must be off,” he finished. “I suppose you are willing that I should use my own judgment as to what I wire to New York about this scrape of yours. I’ll make things as easy as possible for you, of course.”

“Very well. I’ll leave all that to you.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

FRIDAY, the 13th of June, one week after the day the Sea Spume had scurried into St. Petersburg, came without making any apparent change in the situation. Nothing had been learned as to the fate of Professor Shishkin, and both Bristow and Caruth were convinced that the old man had perished. Wilkins and Florence had not been heard from, despite the fact that the entire Baltic was lined with spies, police and nihilistic, each intent on regaining the gold which all parties had become convinced was in the possession of the pair. Their sloop and its precious cargo seemed to have vanished from the earth.

The Russian authorities were still “investigating” the attack on the yacht, without seeming to draw any nearer to an elucidation of the facts. They had called before them and questioned every member of the yacht’s crew. These, however, had been able to tell little, for the reason that they knew little, and, being intensely loyal to Caruth, were all anxious to keep that little to themselves. The inquiry was, in fact, a farce, the Russians knowing perfectly well what the yacht’s errand really had been, yet not being able to declare it or to lay claim to the Orkney’s gold without practically admitting that they had been back of the attack. On the other hand, Caruth could not accuse the Russians, without admitting that he himself was engaged in an adventure that, if not actually piratical, certainly verged on it.

Neither side was therefore in position to force the issue, and the inquiry dragged on from day to day, really waiting the moment when it would be quietly pigeonholed. Both sides steadily went through the motions of pretending desperate efforts to discover what both knew and both were very anxious to keep secret. If it had not been for the disappearance of Professor Shishkin, the whole matter would probably have been allowed to drop.

Professor Shishkin, however, was too distinguished a man to be allowed to drop out of sight so easily. His scientific brethren, especially those in the rest of Europe, were clamoring for an explanation of an attack on one of their number while engaged in scientific work in such a peaceable sea as the Baltic. Hints that the Professor had really been engaged in gold-hunting and that the attack had been made by a gang of thieves, had little effect in calming the agitation. They were simply disbelieved.

Bristow’s inquiries in revolutionary circles had brought abundant confirmation of what he already knew, but had yielded little additional information.

According to the nihilists, the whole affair had been carefully planned by the Russian police. A battalion of marines had been landed at the village of Burndo on the very afternoon of the attack, reaching it by the eastern inlet, and had climbed over the ridge and come down the hill behind the yacht, bringing two field-guns with them. As Miss Fitzhugh had guessed, the men were in peasant dress, and it was intended that they should appear to be a band of rioters such as were only too common in Russia in those troubled times. It was supposed that they would capture the yacht without trouble, loot her, and let her go, after perhaps murdering the Russians whom they should find on board. However, lest they should fail, several gunboats and destroyers had been ordered to the spot to intercept the yacht if she should escape. The orders to these were far more grim.

This plan was disarranged by the suddenness with which Florence exposed her signal, and by the haste of the officer in command of the Russian troops. When the sparks from the yacht’s funnels showed that she was getting up steam, this officer feared she was about to flee with the gold, and, wanting the credit of capturing this, had made his attack before the field-guns were in position and before the gunboats had arrived off the mouth of the inlet. Had he moved a half an hour later, the Sea Spume would have been captured or sunk by the hurrying warships.

Concerning the gold, the information was less exact. The nihilists had learned, however, that a sloop, very heavily laden, carrying two men and one woman, had left Burndo for an unknown destination a few moments before the Sea Spume. It had turned south outside the mouth of the inlet, and had passed beyond the ken of the watchers. Probably it was bound for Stockholm or some other foreign port. Its passengers had been identified as Wilkins and Miss Shishkin (really Florence Lee); the third man was unknown, but it was supposed that he was an American sailor who had been living at Burndo for two years or more.

The nihilists felt assured that this sloop had the gold on board, though how it got there, they did not profess to know. Orders had been sent all along the Baltic to watch for it, and if it was found, it would go hard with those on board.

None of this, however, was much satisfaction to Caruth, to whom, indeed, the week had been one of torture. Since Marie Fitzhugh had slipped away on the morning of the yacht’s arrival, no word of her had come to him, and his anxiety as to her safety was continually growing. Events had shown that the Sea Spume had been under surveillance for some time, possibly from the very beginning, and Caruth realized that this could scarcely have been possible without Marie having been seen and recognized. If she had been, her carefully arranged alibi must have been shattered, and instant arrest would assuredly follow her detection on Russian soil.

Even if she escaped the authorities, or if her family connections proved strong enough to enable her to defy them, the disappointed and enraged terrorists had to be considered. She had been ordered before the Inner Circle, and such vague and illusory information as he had been able to gain as to the doings of that body made him fear almost anything. At the same time, he dared not start inquiries, for fear they might precipitate the very calamity he dreaded.

On the morning of his seventh day in St. Petersburg, he could bear the suspense no longer, and turned to Bristow with a demand that he relieve it, as he had done on that far-away evening in New York.

“I seem to be always relying on you to find Miss Fitzhugh for me,” he said, with an attempt at levity. “But if you really have sources of information here that are safe and certain, I wish you would call on them for news of her. The suspense is getting unbearable.”

Bristow frowned slightly. “I don’t suppose there’s any use in talking,” he observed. “You wouldn’t take my advice in New York, and I don’t suppose you’ll take it here. But all the same, I’m going to suggest once more that you’d better let the lady go. As I understand it, she has refused to marry you and has gone back to her own people. Why not go back home and forget her. Candidly, old man, I can’t see anything but ruin ahead for you if you go on.”

As the reporter spoke, a slow flush spread over Caruth’s cheeks. The boy had aged a good deal in the past month; experience had made him far more of a man than he had been when Marie Fitzhugh first came to him. Advice which he had received meekly in New York, he resented in Russia.

“Thank you,” he returned stiffly. “I don’t doubt your advice is good. I should probably say the same to another man under the same circumstances. But please understand, once for all, that it is not for me. The only question is, will you help me or shall I have to seek farther?”

“Oh, I’ll help you, confound you!” returned the reporter. “What do you want to know?”

“I want to know about Miss Fitzhugh. If she has gone back to her relatives and is safe and well, I want to know it. If she is under arrest, I want to know it. If she is in trouble with the Brotherhood on account of the loss of the gold, I want to know it. And wherever she is, if she needs help, I want to get to her and give it.”

“Humph! That’s a good-sized program you’ve laid out, isn’t it? Well, the Lord watches over children, lovers, and—well, fill the blank yourself. I can give you some news. I heard it last night, and was debating whether to tell you or not. Miss Fitzhugh is in trouble with the Brotherhood. She is charged with responsibility for the loss of the gold. A special meeting is to be held to consider her case.”

“Well?”

“As I understand it, when any one has failed at anything and is summoned before the Inner Circle, it means that he or she is to be entrusted with some particularly dangerous duty. Some forlorn hope, such as throwing a bomb or something,—not as a punishment, you understand, but as a chance to retrieve the failure. Such a chance means almost certain death, either instant or later on the scaffold. I’m sorry, old man; I know it’s hard to bear, and I guess it’s best to tell you.”

Caruth’s face was white, but his jaws were set. He passed by the reporter’s regrets as though they had not been spoken.

“You speak as if it were all settled,” he grated. “Is it?”

“Not yet. But it will be. There is no real doubt.”