“I rushed wildly up and endeavoured to stop the horrible punishment.”

A Secret Service.] [[Page 33]

A SECRET SERVICE

BEING
STRANGE TALES OF A NIHILIST

BY
WILLIAM LE QUEUX
AUTHOR OF
“Zoraida,” “The Great War in England in 1897,” “Guilty Bonds,”
“Stolen Souls,” “The Temptress,” “Devil’s Dice,” &c.

SECOND EDITION

London:
Ward, Lock & Co., Limited
Warwick House, Salisbury Square, E.C.
New York and Melbourne
1896

[All rights reserved]

PREFACE.

While writing for The Times a series of articles dealing with the Russian Revolutionary movement and the condition of political exiles in Siberia, I became acquainted with the original of Anton Prèhznev. Strange as his stories chronicled in these pages may appear, there are nevertheless in London at the present moment many refugees from the Tzar’s empire who could relate facts of an even more startling character. Tzaricide is unfortunately as popular in Russia as it ever was, and the so-called Nihilists have, since the accession of Nicholas II., relinquished none of their activity. There was but little genuine mourning for Alexander III., and the feigned national affliction was speedily succeeded by joyful anticipations of a new and prosperous era. But Russia has already found that her golden hopes have faded. The powerful, unscrupulous officials surrounding the young sovereign, prompted by those evil principles that made Russia under Alexander III. a blot upon European civilisation, have, by painting in lurid colours a rude and ungrateful nation whom to govern is now his thankless task, quickly succeeded in crushing any projected reforms. Thus the despairing nation continues to writhe under the oppression of corrupt officials, and those who dare lift their voices in protest are arrested and hurried without trial to far Siberia. The land is inundated with the swelling flood of the people’s sorrow as rivers in spring, abundant with water, overflow the fields, and it will always be as long as an irresponsible, cruel, and despotic autocracy holds and directs her destinies.

The Tzar knows little of the horrors committed in his name. He has never been inside the tenth pavilion in Warsaw Citadel, where starving people have, times without number, been knouted to death. He knows nothing of the dark underground dungeons overrun with vermin in the Peter-Paul Fortress; he has never breathed their fœtid, poisoned atmosphere. Even when he crossed Siberia the officials who surrounded him took every precaution to prevent him from witnessing the troops of wretched, shivering humanity trudging through trackless snows and driven to their gloomy tombs with knouts and butt-ends. Revolutionists are the creation of circumstances, of the general discontent of the people, of the striving of Russia after a new social framework. Discontent only grows the more when it is repressed. For this reason the places of slain and imprisoned Revolutionists are constantly taken by individuals who come forth from among the people in ever-increasing numbers, and who are still more embittered, still more energetic. Truly the Imperial Autocracy is tottering towards its doom.

By a special order issued from the Press Bureau at St. Petersburg copies of this book are prohibited from entering the Russian Empire, while, not content with the formal interdiction of my novel, “Guilty Bonds,” which deals with a political conspiracy, the Russian Government has also sent one of its emissaries to my house in London to inform me of the fact. This, I believe, is a personal attention received by no other English author. The methods of the agents of the Russian Secret Police in London and the measures taken by the Revolutionists to repress their activity will probably be a revelation to English readers, some of whom will doubtless recognise a few of the following chapters as having appeared in my “Strange Tales of a Nihilist,” now out of print. That I have been compelled to bestow fictitious names upon the actors in these dramas, add and suppress certain incidents, and change the scene in more than one instance, is obvious; nevertheless, I anticipate that many will recognise in Anton Prèhznev’s stories solutions of more than one sensational mystery that has startled Europe.

William Le Queux.

CONTENTS.

A SECRET SERVICE.
BEING STRANGE TALES OF A NIHILIST.

CHAPTER I.
WHY I BECAME A NIHILIST.

Brief forewords are necessary to this record of an adventurous life.

At the outset it is my earnest desire to disabuse the minds of English readers that the Narodnaya Volya, or the Party of Freedom, are mere murder leagues. Unfortunately, English writers, unacquainted with Russian life, ignorant of the true objects of the organisation, or of its inner working, and only recognising its far-reaching influence, have surrounded Nihilism with a glamour and mystery that would be highly amusing to us were it not for the fact that their sensational and sanguinary narratives injure our cause. So little does the average Englishman know of the conditions of life under the Tzar, that any argument in favour of Nihilism would be useless and wearisome, therefore I leave him to decide for himself, after reading the exciting episodes of a strange career, whether Autocracy or Freedom is to be preferred.

I, Anton Prèhznev, subject of the Tzar, now in exile in England, hereby make free and full confession of my secret alliance with the so-called and mis-called Nihilist Party. We, who are struggling to effect a change for the better in the internal and economical condition of the Russian people, look with envy upon every Englishman, at the same time regarding him as a brother. To overthrow the dynasty by murder is not our object, although, alas! human life has been sacrificed, as my narrative will show. We desire peace; and while staying our hand and refraining from dealing the blows that are at this moment in our power to strike at the Imperial Autocracy, we are living in the expectation that the flood of popular indignation will sweep off the face of the Russian soil the bureaucracy, the tchinovniks, and the present ruinous and shameful system of organised robbery and tyranny, and create something better than the existing brutality and corruption that has plunged so many millions in abject misery.

Prior to narrating the exciting incidents of my career, it will be necessary, in order that it should be rightly understood why I lifted a hand against the rule of the Tzar, Alexander III., or his successor the Tzar Nicholas, to describe the tragic events which led to the overflow of my indignation against tyranny, and caused my subsequent alliance with the Brothers of Freedom.

Few English readers rightly understand the claims of the Russian Revolutionists, therefore it will be well to make an explanation, and I cannot do better than quote from the secretly printed manifesto issued by the Narodnoe Pravo (“Popular Right”) Party. This manifesto, which was recently circulated widely by clandestine means throughout the Russian Empire, and even in Siberia, points out in forcible language that Russia must now determine her further destinies, and consider the question of political freedom. It proceeds as follows:—

“As there is not, and cannot be, a hope that the Government will willingly enter upon the path indicated, there is but one course remaining to the people, to oppose by the force of organised public opinion the inertness of the Government and the narrow dynastic interests of the autocracy. The Narodnoe Pravo has in view the creation of this force. In the opinion of the Party popular right includes in itself alike the conception of the right of the people to political freedom, and the conception of its right to secure its material needs upon the basis of national production. The Party considers the guarantees of this right to be:—Representative government on the basis of universal suffrage; freedom of religious belief; independence of the Courts of Justice; freedom of the Press; freedom of meeting and association; inviolability of the individual, and of his rights as a man.

“Thus understanding popular right, the Party sets itself the task of uniting all the oppositional elements of the country, and of organising an active force which should, with all the spiritual and material means at its disposal, attain the overthrow of autocracy, and secure to every one the rights of a citizen and a man.”

I commenced life under a disadvantage, for I am a Jew.

In Russia the law declares all Hebrews to be “aliens whose several rights are regulated by special ordinances,” and my race is regarded as a pariah caste in consequence. The memory of my earlier years it is unnecessary to recall. My father, Isaac Prèhznev, was a well-known operator on the Bourse in Petersburg, and he and my mother moved in good society. Our house in the Isàkievskaya was well known to people with long-sounding titles and long pedigrees, and, as children, my sister Mascha and I had made a practice of standing upon the stairs on Thursday nights, watching the arrival of the uniformed and much-decorated men and handsome ladies who attended the receptions which my parents gave weekly during the season.

Mascha, three years my junior, was petted by the guests and servants none the less than I had been, for we were a pair of over-indulged children, and lived a life of uninterrupted happiness.

At last I arrived at an age when departure from home became compulsory, and one eventful day I bade farewell to those I loved and was drafted to Vologda to perform my military service. From a life of luxurious ease to a soldier’s existence in the barren district around Lake Kubinskoi was by no means a pleasurable change, especially as, according to law, no Jew can rise to the rank of officer, although he is bound to serve in the rank and file like all other Russians. Nevertheless, I endured the wearying monotony of eternal drill, receiving occasional letters that came from my distant home like brief rays of sunshine upon my otherwise dark, unhappy life. Suddenly, when I had been at Vologda about two years, they ceased. Several times I wrote, but received no answer. I telegraphed, but with the same result. I wrote to relatives in Petersburg inquiring the cause of my parents’ strange silence, yet even these letters remained unanswered.

Unable to obtain leave of absence, the days passed slowly, and I grew sorely puzzled at the mystery.

Imagine my feelings when one morning a comrade, who had had a Novoë Vremya sent to him, handed me the newspaper and pointing to a line, asked—

“Is he any relation of yours?”

I looked eagerly where he indicated. My heart stood still, and the paper fell from my nerveless grasp.

It was an announcement to the effect that “Isaac Prèhznev, Jew, of the Isàkievskaya, St. Petersburg,” had formed one of the convoy of prisoners exiled by administrative process to Siberia during the past week!

Ignorant of the whereabouts of my mother and sister, and apprehensive regarding their future, I was refused leave and forced to continue my military service until the day arrived when I was free to return and seek them.

To preserve the continuity of this narrative, events must here be described which were afterwards related to me by Mascha.

From some unknown cause my unfortunate father had fallen into disfavour with the Tzar, although nothing was known of it until one night, during the progress of a ball at home, half-a-dozen men from the Okhrannoë Otdelenïe,[1] entered and arrested him. A fortnight later he was sent, without trial, to the mines of the Trans-Baikal, all he possessed was confiscated by the Government, and my mother and sister turned into the streets to starve.

Our relations were poor and could do little to assist them; therefore, in order to hide their poverty, Mascha and her mother went to Mstislavl, a small sleepy town in the Government of Moghilev, where for nearly a year they earned a precarious livelihood by doing needlework and making lace. But the year was disastrous to Russia, for a terrible famine spread over the land, and, alas! for my unfortunate family, its effects were keenly felt in Moghilev. At the time I arrived at Petersburg in search of them, they had no work and were starving.

Stretched upon a straw mattress in the corner of a cold, bare room in a wretched isba, lay my mother, her thin, haggard face, protruding cheek bones, and sunken eyes showing unmistakably that death was at hand.

Mascha stood, pale and motionless, looking sorrowfully down upon her. In the grey light of the brief autumn day the dismal place presented a woeful aspect, being almost devoid of furniture, the round discoloured stove having gone out several days ago. Notwithstanding her plain shabby dress, it was certain that Mascha was beautiful; all Mstislavl, if called upon, would bear witness to this fact. About eighteen years of age, she was tall, slender, graceful, with beautifully rounded throat and arms, fair wavy hair drawn back upon her brow, a dazzling complexion, and eyes of clear child-like blue. When she smiled her charms were enhanced by an expression of indescribable simplicity and frankness.

At this moment, however, she presented a sad picture, for her hair had fallen dishevelled about her handsome face, and her eyes were red with weeping. As her mother tossed wearily upon her pallet, moaning in pain, Mascha fell upon her knees and kissed the cold, drawn face.

“Are you suffering much, mother dearest?” she asked, tenderly, smoothing away the dark hair from the clammy forehead.

“Yes—I—I’m sinking fast, my child,” she replied in a faint, hoarse voice. “I shall leave you very soon, Mascha, and you will be alone, with no other protector except God, to whose mercy I confide you. Trust in Him in the hours of affliction or misfortune, and by His infinite power He will guide your footsteps and protect you from all harm.” She paused, and added, “Though you may be scoffed at and persecuted by Orthodox Russians, never forget that you are one of God’s chosen, and while resenting insult, always refrain from revenge.”

“I can’t bear to hear you talk like this,” cried my sister, bursting into tears. “You must not—you shall not die!” Springing suddenly to her feet, she stifled her sobs, and said, “You sha’n’t starve! I’ll save you, even if compelled to beg bread from the Gentiles. I shall not be long, and I will bring you food.”

With these words, she threw a cloak around her shoulders, and opening the door, disappeared; while her mother closed her wearied eyes and prayed earnestly for succour.

Through the old uncleanly Ghetto—the quarter in which Jews were suffered to reside—Mascha wandered aimlessly, wondering where she could discover a person generous enough to give her a morsel of bread. She knew it was useless to ask for food of the people of her own faith, for they were all in terrible distress. Owing to the failure of the harvest for two consecutive seasons food was so scarce in Western Russia, that in many places the peasants were subsisting on grass and roots, while hundreds were dying daily of sheer starvation. But worst of all, the feeling against the Jews had become greatly embittered, from the fact that the moujiks, in their ignorant fanaticism, had been taught to believe by the village popes that the Hebrews had brought the famine upon the land. Hence Jew-baiting had become rife. Unfortunate Israelites were cuffed and assaulted in the open streets, and were unable to obtain redress, and in dozens of towns in Little and Central Russia the Ghettos had been looted and afterwards burned.

In these anti-Semitic excesses Jews were treated worse than dogs, often ruthlessly murdered without a hand being stretched forth to save them, while women were outraged in sight of their children, and there were committed diabolical atrocities that had raised the indignation of every European nation. Murder and pillage ran riot through the Tzar’s domains, side by side with the grim spectre Famine, that had spread starvation and death through the great Empire from the White Sea to the Caucasus.

The Ghetto at Mstislavl was the oldest quarter of the little town, consisting of one dark, evil-smelling street, into which the sun never seemed to shine. The black wooden houses, with numerous poles projecting from the windows, further increased the darkness of the narrow lane. From end to end Mascha walked through it, but found no one who could render her assistance. The place seemed deserted, the houses were all closed; the usually noisy colony seemed hushed by death.

Leaving the Jews’ quarter, she made her way through the town and entered the market-place, where a little business was still being carried on. Groups of moujiks in their dirty sheepskins were standing about idly, their thin, pinched faces showing that they, too, were feeling the effect of the dearth of food. While wandering along, engrossed in her own sad thoughts, Mascha chanced to look up, and her eyes fell upon a buxom young woman, who held a large piece of bread in her hand, from which she was feeding a great black dog.

The thought flashed across her mind that she must get food by some means, and save her mother’s life. Without a moment’s reflection, she stifled her pride, and rushing wildly across to where the woman stood, begged for a portion of the bread.

“You!—Give bread to you!” cried the woman, with a harsh, brutal laugh. “Hebrews are dogs, but this”—and she pointed to the animal at her feet—“this is a Christian dog, and I would rather feed him than you.”

“For my mother’s sake!” implored Mascha. “She’s dying!”

“Bah! If she dies it will be one Jewess the less. Your people are our curse. Go home and die too!”

And the woman spat upon her contemptuously, and turning her back upon the supplicant, continued feeding the dog.

Mascha, crestfallen and dejected, was walking slowly away when she suddenly felt a heavy hand upon her shoulder.

“Now, girl; what do you want here?” inquired a rough, coarse voice.

Glancing up quickly, she recognised the sinister features and shifty feline eyes of Ivan Osnavitsch, the ispravnik.[2]

“I want bread; my mother is starving,” she replied.

“Starving? Like all the other dogs that infest the Ghetto kennels, eh? Well, you’ve no right to beg of Christians. The law of the Mir forbids it, and I ought to take you to prison as a vagabond. If you want food you should go to the Governor. His Excellency has received relief for distribution, and if you call upon him he may probably give you some. Tell him that I sent you.”

“Oh, thank you,” she replied, gratefully; “I’ll go at once.”

Turning, she directed her steps hurriedly towards the palace of the Government, about a mile from the town on the Lubkovo road, while the ispravnik laughed, muttering as he watched her retreating figure: “His Excellency is a connoisseur of pretty faces. He will thank me for sending her.”

Feeling that not a moment was to be lost, Mascha walked quickly along the muddy highway, that ran through a bare, barren country, beside the sedgy bank of the swiftly-flowing Soj.

Only by repute was General Martianoff, the Governor of Mstislavl, known to her. She knew that by the inhabitants of the Ghetto he was dreaded as a cruel, drunken, and depraved official, and she had heard the Rabbi warn them against breaking any of the thousand tyrannical laws which comprise the Swod, or penal code. A Russian District Governor is locally as much of an autocrat as his Imperial Master, the Tzar. He can do exactly what he pleases with the poor, cringing wretches over whom he is given authority. He can condemn Jew or Gentile to prison without trial; he can order any one who displeases him to be knouted, and with his colleague, the ispravnik, and his myrmidons, can enforce inhuman tortures not a whit the less terrible than those of the Spanish Inquisition.

General Martianoff, an average specimen of the nachalniki, ruled his district with the knout, and hating Jews, considered death without torture too good for them. He had even ordered unoffending Hebrews to be flogged because their children omitted to doff their caps to Government officials whom they met in the streets!

It was of this harsh, inhuman Governor that my poor, trusting sister, famished and desperate, sought aid for her dying mother.

The General was lazily smoking a cigar and reading the Novosti in his own well-furnished room, when a man-servant entered, and, after saluting, said, “A young girl desires to see your Excellency. I told her you could not give audience to any one.”

“Idiot! Why did you send her away?”

“She was only a Jewess, your Excellency. But she is still here. She’s the daughter of the financier Prèhznev, of Petersburg, who was sent to the mines.”

“Prèhznev!” repeated the General, in surprise. “Ah! Show her in—and—and see we are not disturbed, Ivanovitch—you understand.”

“Yes, your Excellency.” And the man saluted and disappeared.

In a few seconds Mascha, pale and trembling, advanced timidly into the room. The Governor was standing near the door when she entered, and as he closed it after her he pushed the small brass bolt into its socket. Then he turned sharply, and asked—

“Well, girl, what do you want?”

“Your Excellency,” said Mascha, bowing with that fawning humility which every Hebrew is bound to show towards Government officials, “I have been sent by our good ispravnik, Ivan Osnavitsch.”

“Very kind of him to select beauty for me and send it to my door, I’m sure,” remarked the General, under his breath.

Continuing, Mascha briefly explained that she and her mother were starving, and that her parent was dying of sheer want.

“But you are a Jewess,” he said sternly. “The relief which my Imperial Master has entrusted me to distribute is only for Orthodox Russians.”

“Have pity; have mercy upon us,” she cried earnestly. “I know that I, a Jewess, have no right to ask a favour of your Excellency, but my dear mother is dying!”

“I cannot prevent that, my pretty one,” he said more kindly, stroking her fair, dishevelled hair.

With a quick movement he placed his arm around her waist, and grasping her tightly, pressed her against his breast, adding, “Come, I must have a kiss!”

Before she could evade him, she felt his hot breath upon her face, and his lips pressed her soft, dimpled cheek. Trembling with fear and flushed with indignation, she struggled and succeeded in freeing herself from his hateful clutches. But she did not upbraid him, although her face became more woeful than before.

Frowning, he regarded her with an expression of displeasure, saying: “The wife and child of a political exile classed among dangerous Nihilists can expect no relief from His Majesty’s private purse.”

“It is to your sympathy that I appeal,” Mascha exclaimed imploringly. “Although my people and yours are of different creed, we all adore the same Father, our Tzar.”

“And Isaac Prèhznev was sent to Siberia by étape for conspiring against his life! Curious adoration, eh?”

“It’s false!” she cried hotly. “He was wrongly accused; denounced by some unknown enemy, and sent straight to Irkutsk without any chance of defence.”

“Ha! ha! my pretty champion. So that is the way you speak of the justice of His Majesty! Your words betray you: they show that you, too, have become imbued with the revolutionary teaching of the propaganda.”

Mascha saw she had been trapped. In a moment she knew that he suspected her of Nihilistic tendencies.

Martianoff noticed her alarm, and said: “You need not fear. I don’t intend that you should share your father’s fate. You are too pretty for that.”

“Have you decided to give me food?” she demanded, her brows knit in displeasure.

His coarse, sensual features again relaxed into a leering smile, as he suddenly flung his arm around her neck. Bending, he placed his lips close to her ear, and whispered some words.

“No! no!” she cried wildly. “God protect me!” And she struggled to free herself from his hateful embrace.

“You refuse?” he said, in a stern, harsh voice.

“I would rather die than agree to such terms,” she replied, her eyes flashing with indignation.

“Very well,” he snarled, as he thrust her from him impatiently. “Go back to your hovel and die, you daughter of a dog. Begone!”

“But your Excellency—I——”

“No more words,” he thundered, adding a curse. “Go! or I’ll fling you out.”

Staggering to the door, sorrowful and crestfallen, she drew back the bolt and went out, her eyes half-blinded by tears.

The moment she had gone, the General touched a gong, at the same time muttering: “The dainty, obstinate little bird must be brought to her senses. She must be put into a cage and tamed.”

“Ivanovitch,” he said aloud, addressing his servant. “That Jewess is a Nihilist. Order Osnavitsch to have her closely watched.”

Then he viciously bit the end off another cigar, and taking up the paper, resumed his reading.

Mascha, after leaving the Palace of the Governor, had wandered about for several hours in search of some one who would give her bread; but all her efforts were futile, and when she returned to the Ghetto she had found that her mother had passed away.

With the moonlight full upon her she was kneeling beside the body, her face buried in the ragged covering, and sobbing as if her heart would break. Unable to restrain her flood of emotion, she did not notice the cautious opening of the door, or the entrance of a tall, dark figure that crept noiselessly up behind her and stood in the shadow watching, and listening to her murmurings.

“It’s cruel,” she said aloud, suddenly drawing a long breath and clenching her teeth in despair. “To the Tzar is due the dire misfortune that has fallen upon our house. He has taken our money and cast us forth to die like dogs! It is he—the Tzar—the murderer!—who is responsible for my mother’s death. He is a vampire who lives on the blood of such as us.” Raising her white, tear-stained face and looking up to the bright moon, she cried despairingly: “What can I do? My father exiled, my mother dead, Anton on military service, and I am left alone—alone!” she added, in a half-fearful whisper, “to seek revenge!”

“Very pretty sentiments indeed,” remarked a gruff, harsh voice.

Springing to her feet, she confronted General Martianoff.

“You!” she gasped. “Why—why do you come here?”

“To see you, my pretty one,” he replied, throwing off his great sable-lined shuba. He endeavoured to place his arm around her waist, but she drew back quickly.

“And you have followed me here,” she said, in a tone full of reproach and disgust; “here, into the room where my mother lies dead, in order to continue your hateful attentions—to insult me before her corpse!”

“Ho! ho!” he exclaimed, annoyed. “Then you have not reconsidered your decision?”

“No,” she replied firmly. “Have I not already told you that I prefer death?”

He argued with her, flattered her, laughing all the time at her indignation, and treating it with flippancy. Suddenly she turned upon him with angry passion, saying: “I desire none of your detestable caresses. It is such heartless officials as you who curse our country, who carry out the ukases of the Autocrat with fiendish delight, and who are the catspaws of the Persecutor of our race. What mercy ought I to expect from you, General Martianoff, who sent Anna Ivanovna to the mines merely because she displeased you, and who condemned Paul Souvaroff to solitary confinement in Petropaulovsk for no offence except that he endeavoured to save a defenceless woman from your merciless clutches. It is——”

“Silence! Wench!” he thundered.

“I will not be hushed when you insult me! You talk of love—you—whose dissolute habits are as well-known as the yellow ticket of shame you would thrust upon us Jewesses. I begged bread from you, and you refused. See! there is the result!” and she pointed to where the body lay.

His face had grown livid, and rushing towards her, he grasped her roughly by the shoulder. “I have not come here on a fool’s errand,” he said fiercely; “I don’t intend that you shall evade me—you understand?”

“Let me go!” she demanded, struggling to get free. “Help! help!” she cried.

“Silence! Curse you!” he growled, striking her a heavy blow upon the mouth. Although stunned for a few moments she continued to struggle desperately.

Suddenly he lifted her from her feet and tried to drag her by sheer force to the door leading to the room beyond. She saw his intention, and for several minutes fought fiercely with a renewed strength of which she had not believed herself capable.

Presently, in the heat of the struggle, something heavy fell from his pocket. She stooped and snatched it up. At that moment she felt her strength failing, and exerted every muscle.

“Will you let me go?” she shrieked, her lips cut and swollen by the cruel blow he had dealt her.

“No, I will not,” he replied, with an imprecation.

As he uttered the words something bright glittered in her hand. He grasped her arm, endeavouring to gain possession of it, but was too late.

There was a flash, a loud report, and General Martianoff staggered back against the wall with an agonised cry.

“You—you’ve shot me!” he gasped hoarsely, and then sank upon a chair, inert and helpless, with blood streaming from a wound in his shoulder.

Mascha, in desperation, had resorted to the last extremity in defence of her honour.

That night was an eventful one in Mstislavl.

The ignorant moujiks, encouraged by the officials of the Government, had heaped every indignity possible upon the Jews, and the anti-Semitic feeling reached a climax when it became known that a Jewess had attempted to assassinate the Governor.

Led by a wild-haired local agitator, a mob of a thousand persons proceeded to the Ghetto and carried out a frightful work of destruction. They surged down the narrow street, and after entering the houses and treating the inmates with shocking brutality, looted and set fire to their homes. The enraged rioters wrecked the Synagogue and killed the Rabbi, shouting, “Clear out the rats’ nest! Kill them all!” Screams of pain mingled with wild yells of triumph, and through the long night the Ghetto was a veritable Pandemonium.

The scene was terrible. The street ran with blood. Many Jewish women fell victims to the brutal lust and frantic frenzy of the mob, and were so barbarously maltreated that eleven succumbed, while a dozen men were shot or stabbed.

Before dawn the Ghetto had been totally destroyed and its unfortunate inhabitants, having lost everything they had, were compelled to seek shelter in the forest on the Kritchev road, where many afterwards died of exposure and starvation.

General Martianoff lost no time in wreaking vengeance upon my hapless sister. She had been arrested and taken to prison immediately after firing the shot, and he had condemned her to receive fifty lashes of the knout. Such a sentence was tantamount to death, for punishment by the knout is so barbarous a torture that few strong men could survive so many strokes. Yet whippings were of everyday occurrence in the Tzar’s empire, and even women are not spared by the officials.

It was about ten o’clock on the following morning when Mascha emerged from the grimy portals of the prison, and under a strong escort walked across the market-place to the temporary platform that had been erected. A great crowd had assembled to witness the chastisement of “the pretty Jewess,” and as she mounted the steps, with pale, determined face, they greeted her with fierce yells of triumph.

She looked round upon the sea of upturned countenances contemptuously.

On the platform there had been set up a square wooden frame. Unceremoniously, the brutal moujiks, who assisted the executioner, grasped her with their coarse, dirty hands and tore off her clothing, exposing her bare, white back down to the waist.

The mob roared with approbation when they saw this preparation. A few moments later she was forced upon the black frame, and her wrists and ankles secured so tightly that the tension almost caused dislocation of the joints. Then the executioner, whose duty it was to carry out the sentence, seized the knout—a number of triangular thongs of leather fixed into a short whip handle—and looked round for the signal to commence. As he did so, General Martianoff, with his shoulder bandaged, made his way through the expectant crowd, and shouted—

“Come, get to work. Don’t spare her, but keep the death-blow till last.”

Hushed and open-mouthed, the spectators awaited the result of the first blow.

The executioner receded, swung the terrible torture instrument over his head, and giving it a peculiar twist, brought it down upon the victim’s back with a sound like a pistol-shot.

The cruel thongs cut their way into the flesh and the blood gushed forth. Time after time the blows fell monotonously, until the quivering flesh was beaten to a pulp, and both victim and executioner were covered with blood.

Such was the scene of fiendish brutality that met my gaze on my arrival at Mstislavl, after having traced my mother and sister from Petersburg.

I was making my way through the shouting populace when, out of mere curiosity, I glanced at the face of the unfortunate girl, and recognised her.

Was it surprising that I rushed wildly up and endeavoured to stop the horrible punishment? So suddenly did it all happen, however, that I remember very little about it, except that in my wrathful indignation I cursed the Tzar’s myrmidons, and struck in the face the inhuman Governor who attempted to throw me from the platform. Thinking that I was Mascha’s lover, and enraged at the blow, he thereupon ordered me to receive thirty lashes.

I saw them carry away the insensible, mutilated form of my poor sister. Then they tied me to the frame.

I felt the thongs cut into my back like knives. Once! Twice! Thrice! The pain became excruciating. My head reeled, and a moment later all became blank.

When I regained consciousness I found myself in the prison hospital with warders rubbing salt into my wounds. I asked after Mascha, and was informed that she was still alive, and recovering.

One morning, while exercising in the prison yard, I saw her for a few brief moments, and she told me the story I have narrated.

Two days later my warder announced that we had both been condemned by General Martianoff as assisting in the dissemination of revolutionary propaganda, and sentenced to hard labour for life in the Siberian mines!

Then I made a solemn vow of revenge, and from that moment became a Nihilist.

FOOTNOTES

[1] “Security Section” of the Secret Police.

[2] Chief of police.

CHAPTER II.
ON TRACKLESS SNOWS.

During six weary months I had been kept in solitary confinement in a small, cold, ill-lit cell in the Fortress of Peter and Paul at Petersburg, whither I had been transferred from Mstislavl. Dispirited by solitude, weakened by lack of exercise, and ill through want of proper medical attention, I began to fear that the confinement would cause my reason to give way; therefore it was with a feeling of relief that one day I greeted the announcement of my warder that we were to start for Siberia on the morrow.

A detailed description of the frightful hardships of my long and terrible journey would fill a volume, but it is only my intention to outline them briefly.

With a hundred other men and women of all ages we left the grim fortress at midnight, a sorry, smileless band, whose clanking chains formed an ominous accompaniment to the loud shouts and cracking of whips of our Cossack escorts. We were each attired in grey kaftan, strong knee-boots, and sheepskin bonnet. Our breasts bore a metal plate with a number, while strapped over our shoulders was the rug, the mess tin, and the wooden spoon that comprised our travelling kit.

With ankles fettered by long heavy chains held to the waist by means of a rope, we were fastened together in gangs and passed out upon the Chudova road on the first stage of the weary tramp to that bourne whence few exiles return. The rumbling of the springless carts in the rear, for those who might fall ill on the way, awoke the echoes of the silent thoroughfares, and following us were several Cossacks who with lanterns carefully examined the road over which we had passed, in order that no letter should be dropped clandestinely.

The night was wet and stormy as our weird, dismal procession passed through the slumbering city and out upon the broad highway on its journey eastward to the Ourals. Our wet clothes clung to us as we walked; the icy wind that blew across the wide open plain chilled our bones. Nevertheless, we plodded doggedly onward in silence, for conversation had been forbidden, and those who had spoken had felt the heavy thongs of the escort’s knout. The settled look of despair, and the sighs that frequently escaped my fellow-exiles, plainly showed what were their feelings at being banished from their native land.

Since the day I had seen Mascha in the prison-yard I had heard nothing of her. A thousand times I had wondered what had been her fate; yet now, in my despair, I had relinquished all hope of seeing her again. Indeed, irreparable ruin had descended upon myself and my family so swiftly, that already I had grown callous as to my ultimate fate.

Without trial, I had been sentenced by the Provincial Governor of Moghilev, upon the report of General Martianoff, to hard labour for life. Such, alas! was my punishment for endeavouring to rescue my poor defenceless sister from the inhuman wrath of the dissolute representative of the Tzar! I was well aware that for the Russian political convict is reserved a death by slow torture to which any other means of ending life is preferable. The silver mines in the terrible district beyond Lake Baikal are the tombs of political suspects. The Government is well aware that the conditions under which convicts work at Kara, Nerchinsk, Pokrovski, and the other distant mining settlements to which “politicals” are sent, are such as to cause death in from five to seven years. With that refinement of cruelty for which the Government has earned an unenviable notoriety, it has abolished the death sentence and substituted one more torturing in that distant land where God is high and the Tzar is far away. The prisons and étapes of Siberia are foul, insanitary, half-ruined wooden structures where human beings perish like flies. Typhoid, diphtheria, and other epidemic diseases prevail there constantly, and infect all who have the misfortune to be huddled into the awful places. The grievously sick, for want of attendance, wallow on the floor in the midst of filth, and their clothes rot on their bodies; while so over-crowded are these pestilential kameras by persons of all ages and both sexes, that for those who are not fever-stricken there is neither room to sit nor lie.

The exiles who are consigned underground are convicts of the worst type, and political offenders of the best. The murderer for his villainy, the intelligent honest Muscovite who expresses Liberal opinions—not a whit more revolutionary than the ideas of English Radicals—are deemed equally worthy of slow, agonising death.

Having reached Chudova, we were conveyed by train to Nijni Novgorod, and there placed in a sort of cage on board a large barge, and taken down the Volga and up the Kama to Perm, whence we took train to Ekaterinbourg, a town of considerable proportions beyond the Ourals.

Here our weary journey on foot across Siberia commenced, and long before the Asiatic frontier was reached, the paucity of human habitations, the barrenness of the soil, and the increasing bleakness of the climate, had had their effect upon even the hardiest among us. But we still pushed onward, ill, hungry, footsore.

I well remember the day we crossed the frontier, and bade farewell to our native land.

Already we had walked three hundred versts from Ekaterinbourg, along the Great Post Road, at that season covered by a deep snow, and only marked by the long straight line of black telegraph posts and wires. Away, as far as the eye could reach, nothing was visible but the broad plain of dazzling whiteness, and the grey, snow-laden sky, when suddenly we came to a tall, square, brick-built obelisk, bearing on one side the arms of the European province of Perm, and on the other those of the Asiatic province of Tobolsk. It was the boundary-post of that great lonely prison-land, Siberia.

No other boundary-mark in the world has witnessed so much human suffering, or, according to Mr. George Kennan, has been passed by such a multitude of heart-broken people. As it is situated about half-way between the last European and the first Siberian étape, the captain allowed our convoy to halt for rest, and for a last farewell to home and country. The Russian peasant, even when a criminal, is patriotic, and deeply attached to his native land; and there was a heart-rending scene when our wearied band stopped before the crumbling obelisk. Some gave way to wild hysterical grief; some comforted the weeping; others knelt and pressed their faces to the loved soil of their native land, and collected a little earth to take with them into exile, while a few of the women, pale, tragic figures in their black-hooded cloaks, pressed their thin, pale lips to the European side of the cold brick pillar, kissing good-bye to all it symbolised.

The officer commanding our escort, who had been smoking a cigarette, and looking with calm indifference upon this touching scene, suddenly shouted the stern order, “Stroisa!” (“Form Ranks”), and at the word “March,” a few moments later, we crossed ourselves, and with a confused jingling of chains and leg-fetters, moved slowly away, past the boundary post, into Siberia.

Day after day, week after week, hungry, cold, and fatigued, we trudged across the bleak, snow-covered steppes, until life became so burdensome that we longed for death.

Sometimes we passed the night in an insanitary étape in one of the wretched little villages along the road, but often we camped out in the open, and, after our meagre ration of soup, wrapped our rugs around us, and slept upon the ground around the fire we had lit. The hardships of the long, monotonous marches were bad enough for men to bear, but the women—who numbered about twenty, including several of noble birth, condemned to the mines as Nihilist conspirators—fared worst of all.

One of them, Madame Marie Koutowzow, was a young widow I had met in Petersburg society. She told me that she had incurred the special animosity of a tschinovnik, or Government official, by refusing to marry him, and he, anxious to avenge himself, had caused her arrest, and had heaped up the hardships which might hurry her out of life. Death had released three of these delicately nurtured ladies from their misery, and we had buried them, without coffin or religious ceremony, ere we reached Tobolsk.

When at length we arrived at the latter town, we were lodged in the great convict prison, and allowed to rest for two days, after which we resumed our journey eastward to Tomsk, arriving there three weeks later, with our clothing in rags, and almost shoeless.

Although our experiences had been terrible enough during our forced marches, the most horrible of all was our sojourn at the perisilni at Tomsk—the prison where exiles remain until their fate is decided upon by the authorities. The horrors of this den of vileness were indescribable. The kamera, or public cell, into which we were driven like cattle, was a long low room, ill-ventilated, and disgustingly dirty. Already there were fully fifty convicts in it, and the smell of humanity that greeted us as the great iron door was opened I shall never forget. When I looked around and noted the dreadful groups, ragged, unkempt, unwashed, some lying on the sloping wooden shelves which formed the common beds, others crouching on the filthy floor, I shuddered with horror, and was appalled.

Amid this filth disease was rife. No fewer than four men and two women were at that moment dying of typhoid, while the body of a girl who had succumbed was lying unheeded in a corner. No notice whatever was taken of invalids by the officials, and I afterwards learnt that this room, originally intended as an infirmary, had been converted into a common cell for the accommodation of the ever-increasing crowds of exiles, 12,000 of which pass through the prison annually.

Coarse brown bread and tschi were our two articles of diet. The former was flung to us as to dogs, and owing to the rations never being sufficient to satisfy all, a fierce fight for a morsel of food invariably resulted. Ravenously hungry men struggled with one another to secure bread for their wives and children who had voluntarily accompanied them into exile, while friendless females, too ill to move, were left in corners to die.

It was hardly surprising that Marie Koutowzow, a refined and delicate woman, should become infected by the fever that was raging. Very soon she grew too ill to participate in the daily fight for food, and I obtained her rations for her. Lying upon one of the plank beds at the further end of the kamera, she bore the ravages of the disease bravely, praying that death might release her. Her desire was fulfilled, for six days after she had been attacked the malady proved fatal.

For three whole days the body was allowed to remain in that crowded den of filth. None dare complain. We knew too well that the reward for pointing out the fact to the officials would be an unceremonious knouting, for in Siberia the lash is used at the slightest provocation.

In the same ragged dress that I had worn during my three months’ tramp from European Russia, and which was insufficient to protect me from the intense cold, I was taken from this Dantean kamera at dawn one day and chained to a large gang of convicts. Then I learned that my sentence was subterranean hard labour at Kara, the most terrible mines in the whole of Siberia!

To the exiles who had been my companions from St. Petersburg I bade farewell, and as one of a convoy of criminals of the most dangerous class, I left the forwarding-prison and wearily dragged my chains across the endless snow-covered steppes, en route for the dreaded district beyond Irkutsk. The thought that each step took me nearer to my living tomb rendered me desperate. Why should I, innocent of crime, be tortured to death in the same manner as murderers and hardened criminals?

I resolved to endeavour to escape. It was a mad project, I admit, for there was but little chance of crossing the wastes of snow which stretched away three thousand miles before civilisation could be reached. Nevertheless I determined to risk all. If I died in the snow, or starved, it would end my miserable existence, and prevent further tortures being heaped upon me.

In this frame of mind hope returned, and I walked on day after day, watching for a chance to carry my hazardous design into effect. After leaving Krasnoyarsk the chains that bound us to one another were removed, and we were allowed to walk in groups. One day while trudging along the road leading to Irkutsk we halted at a post-station. The weather being intensely cold, the captain commanding the Cossacks sometimes allowed those of us who had money to purchase vodka. On this occasion, however, when we knocked at the door, our summons remained unanswered. It was evident that the two men placed in charge of the low log house had gone to visit their neighbours, the nearest of whom were twenty versts distant; so after a further endeavour to open the door, we were compelled to resume our weary tramp. About ten versts farther on we encamped for the night on the border of a gloomy pine forest. This was the first occasion we had slept near anything that might act as cover, therefore I resolved, when my comrades were asleep, to slip past the sentries, and make a dash for liberty. Tying my leg chain tighter to my waist to prevent it jingling, I threw myself down after eating my evening ration, and waited with breathless impatience. The minutes seemed hours, until at last the camp became hushed in slumber; then I carefully rose, while the Cossack sentry’s back was turned, and plunged swiftly and silently into the great, dismal forest.

It was an exciting moment. Every second I expected to hear the hue and cry raised, but as I gradually increased the distance between my captors and myself, it seemed as though my escape remained undiscovered. For an hour I walked in a straight line through the trees, and at length I doubled, in the hope of finding the post-road I had left. My anticipations were realised, and during the remainder of the long, dark Siberian night I sped along as fast as my tired legs would carry me over the road we had travelled on the previous day.

The almost insurmountable obstacles to my escape never entered my head, so elated was I at the prospect of freedom.

Dawn came, and the weak, yellow rays of the sun were struggling forth, when by chance I turned and looked behind me.

What I saw caused me breathless terror and dismay. In the distance, looking like three black ants on the snowy horizon, were a trio of mounted Cossacks riding at full gallop.

It was evident they had seen me!

I looked round for some means of concealment, but there was none. In the distance, about a verst away, I saw the deserted post-house we had passed on the day previous. Without knowing what impelled me, I started running as hard as I could in that direction; but as I glanced round from time to time I saw the Cossacks were fast gaining upon me.

They shouted to me to stop, but I took no heed. Some superhuman strength seemed to possess me, and I ran swiftly and lightly over the snow towards the house. Gradually they drew nearer, and then I heard the report of a rifle, but finding myself unhurt, I redoubled my pace.

As the triumphant yells of the galloping Cossacks broke upon my ears, I gained the rear of the house and halted for a moment to discover some safe retreat.

There was none. The doors were fastened as they had been on the day before. Not a moment was to be lost, for already I heard the thud of the horses’ hoofs upon the snow. I had to choose between a brief life of horrible torture that would follow my recapture, and instant death! I chose the latter.

Glancing round wildly, I sought means of suicide. As I did so the yelling soldiers, with revolvers drawn, came tearing round the side of the house.

“Surrender! or we’ll fire!” they cried.

I looked determinedly into their faces. It was a case of life or death, and they were driving me to the latter.

Before they could anticipate my intention or level their weapons at me, I made a dash for a deep well, situate about twenty yards distant, shouting in my despair—

“I’ll kill myself rather than go back!”

A moment later I had jumped headlong into it.

How long I remained in a state of semi-consciousness I had no idea. I remember lying silent and motionless listening to the voices of the soldiers above, and scarce daring to breathe.

“See!” cried one, “it’s useless to get him out. His neck is broken or he could never be crushed into a heap like that.”

The second man suggested that I might be merely stunned, but the third exclaimed—

“He’s dead enough, poor devil. Why should we trouble ourselves to take him out? Leave that work for the post-house keeper when he returns.”

“He was no fool either,” observed the first man grimly. “I should kill myself if I had the same choice.”

Although the second man did not persist in his demand for my extrication, he fired his revolver down the well, afterwards remounting and riding slowly back with his companions.

When I thought they had departed I rose, and to my intense delight found myself uninjured. The well being frozen, the ice was covered with a thick layer of snow, and this had considerably diminished the concussion of my fall. The Cossack’s bullet had not struck me, and beyond a bruise on my elbow I was none the worse for my reckless leap.

At this moment I discovered that the chain used to draw up water was unwound from the windlass and suspended close to my hand. With an exclamation of joy I grasped it, and after ascertaining that it was fast at the top, quickly clambered to the surface and in a few moments again stood before the post-house.

Then the thought suggested itself that if I could effect an entrance I might discover food and clothing, for it was impossible for me to go far in a convict’s dress with a yellow diamond upon the back, without being rearrested. I tried both doors, but they were securely fastened. After a search, however, I came across a long piece of iron in an outhouse, and with it contrived to wrench off the latch of a window-shutter. Afterwards I broke open the double windows and clambered in. The one large room facing the road was a bare-boarded, dirty apartment, and, like all Siberian post-houses, devoid of any furniture beyond a plain deal table, a couple of rush-bottomed chairs, and a bench. In the centre stood a large, round stove, while on the wall was a badly executed picture of the Virgin. There was some food upon the table, and the room bore evidence of recent occupation.

As I passed into the sleeping apartment beyond, I started and drew back in alarm, for lying upon the unclean straw mattress, fully dressed, and covered with a heavy fur overcoat, lay a man. His face was turned from me, but after a moment’s hesitation I shook him gently by the shoulder. He did not stir.

I placed my hand upon his face, but drew it back instantly, for its contact thrilled me. It was icy cold! The man was dead!

As I realised the truth, my eyes fell upon a piece of paper lying upon the chair beside him. Taking it up, I read the following words written in pencil in a feeble, shaky hand—

“I shall die before you can return with medical aid. I order you in the name of the Tzar to send on the despatches by a trusty messenger. You will be repaid.—Ivan Drukovitch.”

On searching the body I found the dispatches referred to secreted in the money-belt around his waist. There were three official letters, secured by the Imperial seal, and addressed to General Sergius Okoulow, Governor of the District of Kolymsk, the Arctic exile settlement in the Province of Yakoutsk. With the letters I found about 500 roubles in notes, and a passport which declared the bearer to be “Ivan Drukovitch, messenger in the service of His Imperial Majesty the Tzar, on official business to the Governor of Kolymsk.”

It did not take me long to decide what course to adopt. Divesting myself of my rags—which I put in the stove and set fire to—I attired myself in the dead man’s uniform, strapped the money-belt with its contents around my waist, together with a revolver, and destroyed the note the dead man had written. After a brief search I discovered a file among the tools belonging to the post-house keeper, and in half an hour had succeeded in freeing my ankles of the galling fetters. Getting out of the window, I went to the stable, where I found the courier’s horse, and having saddled it mounted and rode away in the direction the convoy had taken.

Fortunately, my head had not been shaved, as is usual with criminals entering upon the life sentence. The transformation from convict to Imperial messenger was complete. My official dress, with its brass double-headed eagle on the cap, was an effectual disguise. The wide collar of my riding-coat was turned up, and just as it was growing dusk I overtook the convoy. As I saluted the officers they responded, and I rode past, inwardly chuckling, and soon left the sorry band of malefactors far behind.

Mine was a terribly lonely and monotonous journey. Instead of following the road to Irkutsk, I rode due north until I came to the mighty Lena, afterwards travelling along its bank a distance of 700 English miles, until I reached Yakoutsk. Remaining there for a couple of days, I again bade farewell to all human companionship, and set out for the terrible regions within the Arctic circle.

From the first I had recognised that it would be useless to attempt to return to Petersburg by recrossing the Ourals, for the passport was endorsed with dates so recent that if I presented it at the European frontier it would be at once discovered that I had not had time to travel to Kolymsk. This, combined with various other reasons, caused me to assume the rôle of courier and deliver the Tzar’s dispatches to the person to whom they were addressed.

It is needless to refer in detail to my journey of 2,500 versts from Yakoutsk across the great uninhabited desert and over the moss-covered tundras, or Arctic swamps, to the most northerly exile settlement. Lonely and weary, I sometimes rode for three and four days without reaching a post-house or seeing a single human being, and frequently I was in a half-starved, half-frozen condition. Time passed, and I kept no count of it. My thoughts were only of eventual freedom. Having destroyed the note left by the dying man, together with my convict’s rags, I knew the post-house keeper would be puzzled at finding the corpse had been plundered, and as there was no telegraph to Yakoutsk, I was confident that I should not be forestalled by the news of the courier’s death.

After an incessant journey, lasting two months, I arrived at Sredne Kolmysk, a small town of log huts situate at a point far beyond the Arctic circle, where the deep river Ankudine flows into the Kolyma. The houses, scattered about in disorder, are inhabited by Cossacks, Mieshchany, Yakouts, and exiles. The highest erection is a log church, and the only curiosity a small wooden tower, crooked with age, which stands within the church enclosure, and was built by the conquerors of the country as a protection from raids of hostile tribes. The condition of the unfortunate exiles there was terrible, even for Siberia. In that land, where winter commences in August and lasts till May, and where the temperature varies from nine degrees above freezing-point to thirteen degrees below, man is utterly powerless. Only a handful of wretched savages inhabit the fearful region, having been driven to outer darkness by the tribes with more vitality and energy.

It takes about eighteen months to reach this extremity of the habitable globe, and by introducing, as a part of the penal system, exile to the Arctic zone, the Russian Government has overstepped even its broad allowance of iniquity. This hamlet is a penitentiary colony for political exiles, whose punishment is purposely aggravated by physical suffering, and who are compelled to exist in a perpetual state of famine in dwellings that are simply wretched huts built of upright beams, with rafters laid across and covered with layers of earth. From the Government store musty rye flour is eked out to them at intervals, and for the rest, they subsist upon what fish they can catch in the river.

I was not long in discovering General Okoulow’s residence, and, acting as Imperial messenger, delivered the dispatches in as ceremonious a manner as I could. As I had anticipated, they contained several pardons, and when this became known in the little colony I was fêted and treated with every courtesy and kindness. Although such a reception was pleasant after the wearying monotony of the Verkho-yansk Desert, yet I was anxious for an opportunity to shake the snow of Siberia from my feet. Having waited several days while the Governor was preparing his reports for Petersburg, I one morning made a request—not without trepidation, I admit—that he should endorse my passport so as to enable me to go on a brief visit to a brother in Petropaulovsk before returning to Russia. To my joy, the accommodating Governor saw no objection to this course, and with a light heart I set out at dawn on the following day towards the Stanovoi mountains.

Crossing them, I rode onwards for four weeks through the wild grey mountains until my jaded horse sank and died of sheer exhaustion. Being compelled to perform the remainder of the terrible journey on foot, I walked by slow, weary stages across the great lone land, where nothing marked my route except the sun, and the country being totally uninhabited I had to eat grass and willow-leaves for sustenance. Suddenly, however, at the close of a dull, stormy day, I had the satisfaction of seeing, for the first time, the broad, grey waters of the Pacific stretching away to a limitless horizon.

Even when I had arrived at Petropaulovsk I had by no means eluded the police. The journey to Kolymsk I had undertaken because I recognised how extremely dangerous it would have been to travel to the coast with a passport which distinctly stated my route and destination. The police at Siberian ports are ever-watchful for escaping convicts, but in my eagerness for freedom it never occurred to me that information would be telegraphed to that extreme corner of the empire of the theft of the dead man’s papers. This carelessness nearly resulted in disaster.

It was late one afternoon when I descended the hill at the entrance to the town, and passed along the quay. In doing so I noticed a ship anchored about a mile distant. Of a fisherman I casually inquired what the vessel was, and when she would sail. He replied that it was a Canadian sealer, and that it would sail on the morrow. During the remainder of the day I wandered about the dirty, wretched town in search of some means of escape. I had only twenty roubles left, but with these I intended to bribe some foreign sailor to let me embark as a stowaway.

When it had grown dark and I was looking about for lodging for the night, I discovered, to my dismay, that I was being closely watched by a police spy. In order to allay suspicion, I sought the police bureau, and entering boldly, presented my passport. The ispravnik chanced to be there, and when he glanced at it a curious smile passed over his features.

“The Imperial courier, Ivan Drukovitch, is dead,” he said, looking at me searchingly. “Consider yourself arrested!”

I waited for no more. Ere he had uttered the last sentence I had dashed out of the door and down the street. Half-a-dozen policemen were instantly in full cry after me, but in desperation I was determined not to be apprehended just as I was within an ace of securing my freedom. Exerting every muscle, I ran up and down the narrow streets until I suddenly found myself upon the quay. In the glimmering starlight my eyes caught sight of a moored boat. Without a moment’s hesitation I jumped into it and cut the cord that held it. Before my pursuers could gain the water-side the swift current had taken the boat down beside some great piles and I was effectually hidden in the darkness.

It was an intensely exciting moment.

I heard the hurrying footsteps pass close to where I was concealed, and listened to them receding in the distance. Then I breathed again. Taking the oars, and dreading lest I should be discovered, I pulled swiftly across the bay to the moored ship I had noticed in the afternoon.

The captain, a genial, kind-hearted man, took compassion upon me when I had related my story, and a few hours later I had the gratification of watching the twinkling lights of Petropaulovsk disappear at the stern.

Three weeks later I landed at Victoria, Vancouver, and after a short residence there was provided with funds by our Organisation, and left for England.

CHAPTER III.
MY FRIEND, THE PRINCESS.

The majority of Londoners are unaware that the headquarters of the most powerful secret organisation in the world exist in their midst. The unsuspecting persons who pass up and down a certain eminently respectable thoroughfare in a north-west suburb, would be somewhat surprised if they knew that in one of these houses the Executive Committee of the Russian Revolutionists holds daily council and matures the plots which from time to time startle Europe.

The thoroughfare, which, for obvious reasons, I shall designate as Oakleigh Gardens, is formed of large, old-fashioned, detached houses which stand somewhat back, with gardens in front. It is lined on each side by fine old elms, and the residences are for the most part built of red brick, with those square, white-framed, unornamented windows of the Georgian era. The house in question is hidden from the quiet road by a high wall in which is a heavy wooden door, but inside one finds a well-kept flower garden and a roomy old house which bears an unmistakable air of wealth and prosperity. Here exiles, whose escape from Siberia Fortune has favoured, find an asylum.

In this house I took up my abode when I arrived in London. Smarting under the terrible punishment to which I had been unjustly subjected, I had long ago taken the oath, and thereby fettered myself body and soul to the Party. I was determined to revenge myself upon the oppressors who had starved my mother, knouted my sister, and sent my father to the mines, although all had been perfectly innocent of any crime. Thus, from a devil-may-care recruit I had developed into an ardent revolutionist whose sole ambition was to assist in the struggle for freedom, and who was prepared to go to any length in order to accomplish the object towards which the Organisation was striving.

From an early age I had been taught English and French, being now able to speak both languages almost as fluently as my own. This knowledge I found of the utmost service, inasmuch as I had been selected by the Executive to perform certain special duties of secret service. They did not hide the fact that the work would require considerable courage and tact, and that my life might sometimes be at stake. But I was fearlessly enthusiastic.

After a six months’ residence in Oakleigh Gardens, during which time I gained a knowledge of London life and made myself acquainted with the majority of those devoted to our Cause resident in the metropolis, the first matter was placed in my hands.

A few months previously, Ivan Grigorovitch, one of our Party, had been chosen to convey some instructions to the Petersburg centre. As he was well known to the Secret Police, he disguised himself as a French commercial traveller, and with a French passport journeyed from Marseilles to Odessa by steamer, intending to proceed thence to Petersburg, the ordinary route from London being considered too dangerous. His intentions, however, were frustrated, inasmuch as the Odessa police, who had been apprised of his advent, arrested him immediately on landing. A disaster resulted, for the papers found upon him were compromising, the plot was discovered, and wholesale arrests were made in Petersburg in consequence.

Twenty-three persons of both sexes were tried in secret, and, according to the Novosti, the evidence given against them by Princess Kochkaryòv caused life sentences to be passed upon each of them.

From facts that came to our knowledge, it was evident that some one who had learned our secret had divulged it to the police, therefore the five men forming the Nihilist Executive Committee—who must be known here as Paul Pétroff, Alexander Grinevitch, Nicolas Tersinski, Isaac Bounakoff, and Dmitri Irteneff—sat in council and condemned the Princess to death.

We cast dice, and it fell to me to carry out the sentence!

The cool, flippant manner in which my fellow-conspirators spoke of murder awed me. They noticed my scruples and pointed out that the woman had, by giving false evidence, been instrumental in the deportation of more than twenty innocent persons, therefore she must die. As I had taken an oath to carry out all commands of the Executive under penalty of death, I was compelled to obey.

I had not far to search for Madame the Princess, for she was residing temporarily in London, having taken a furnished flat at Albert Hall Mansions, overlooking Hyde Park.

In the stalls at the Avenue Theatre I first obtained an uninterrupted view of her. She was seated next to me, a fair form in a black evening dress that revealed her delicate chest and arms, with a gleaming diamond necklet around her white throat. Her age was about twenty-four, and her perfect oval face had a shade of sadness upon it, notwithstanding the great languishing violet eyes, and the tender winning mouth, while her auburn hair had been deftly coiled, and was fastened with a diamond star that flashed and sparkled with a thousand fires. In short, I thought her the most lovely woman I had ever seen.

And I was plotting to kill her!

I gazed into her face, entranced by her marvellous beauty. Toying with her Watteau fan, she turned her eyes full upon me, and the faintest flush suffused her cheek; then she made pretence of reading her programme, and afterwards became interested in the performance. When I went out to smoke during the entr’acte I passed her, and in doing so uttered an apology in Russian, to which she responded in the same language, with a kindly smile.

According to information I had obtained, she was the wife of Prince Kochkaryòv, a noble in the third degree, some twenty years her senior. Their marriage had been fraught with much unhappiness, and after a year they agreed to separate. Since that time the Prince had remained at his gloomy old palace near Markovka, in Little Russia, while his wife, accompanied by an old man-servant and her maid, had resided for brief periods in Petersburg, Paris, and London.

Since her arrival in England it was apparent that she was fulfilling some mission as a Russian Government agent, yet the suspicion she excited in some quarters in no way hindered her from obtaining social influence, and she dispensed hospitality to a very select circle. She went everywhere, and her daily doings were chronicled in the personal columns of the newspapers. I had been watching her for several days, and on this evening had followed her to the theatre in order, if possible, to become acquainted with her.

When the curtain descended and we rose to leave I turned, and said to her politely in Russian—

“You are alone, Madame. Will you permit me to find your carriage?”

“Thanks, you are very kind,” she said in English, with a pretty hesitating accent. “My man has buff livery.”

“And the name, Madame?”

“The Princess Kochkaryòv,” she replied, adding, “We are compatriots, are we not, m’sieur?”

“Yes,” I replied, smiling. “It is always pleasant to meet Russians in a foreign land,” at the same time handing her a card which gave my name as Vladimir Mordvinoff and my address at a suite of furnished chambers I rented in Shaftesbury Avenue.

A few moments later I handed her into her carriage, and as she thanked me and drove away, I walked, morose and thoughtful, up Northumberland Avenue towards my rooms.

During the week that followed we met several times. She showed herself in no way averse to my companionship, for she told me that she was always at home on Thursdays and would be pleased to see me. This invitation I accepted, and thus I became a frequent visitor.

One afternoon I had called and lingered. The guests had departed.

In the fading light of the summer’s evening I was sitting with her in her pretty drawing-room that overlooked the dusty trees. As she lolled gracefully against the window the last ray of sunlight fell upon her, and she looked daintily bewitching.

I admit that I loved her madly, passionately. Overwhelmed by the contemplation of her beauty, enchanted by the magic of her voice, which made the sweetest music out of the merest phrases, I thought of nought but her, and was only happy when at her side. Yet when I remembered the difference in our social position, and her marriage with the Prince, I was almost beside myself with despair; I knew that mine was an adoration that could only end in unhappiness.

Involuntarily my hand touched my pocket and struck something hard. I drew it away in horror. What terrible irony of fate! The woman I loved dearer than life was doomed to die by my hand!

She had been gazing dreamily out of the window, when suddenly with a mischievous smile she exclaimed—

“You are very silent, m’sieur.”

I scarcely know what prompted me, but, jumping up quickly, and grasping her tiny, bejewelled hand, I raised it to my lips and in English poured forth a declaration of my love.

She trembled. Her breath came and went in short, quick gasps, but she did not attempt to arrest the flood of passionate words that escaped me. Ere I had concluded, my heart was filled with joy, for I saw my passion was reciprocated.

Vainly striving to overcome her emotion, she exclaimed excitedly—

“I—I was unprepared—I did not think you loved me, Vladimir. Do you doubt I care for you? Have you not seen it? Mon Dieu! my married life has been only a grim and dismal tragedy. I loved no man until I met you!”

“Do you really think sometimes of me, Princess?” I asked, scarcely believing the truth.

“To you I am Irene,” she said in pretty broken English. “All my life has been wasted hitherto. You have asked me; I have give you answer. I love only you. Some day you will know me better. Now, you know me only for the mad passion I bear for you. But yourself shall make satisfy of my past, my truth, my honour, and—and I shall get—what you call—divorce from the Prince, and we two will marry—eh? Of you I ask not one single question. You are my lover, the only man for whom I have affection, and—and in return I am your serf.”

She buried her flushed face upon my shoulder and sobbed.

Taking her in my arms, I swore to her everlasting constancy. All my heart was in the declaration. In the glamour of that hour we were reckless and egotistical as most lovers, heedless of the shadow that was growing up behind the sunshine of our happy vows of undying affection. When she grew calm, she looked up searchingly into my eyes and said: “You cannot understand me. You do not know the bitterness of my life.”

“No, Irene. Tell me about yourself,” I said.

Hesitatingly she seated herself in a wicker chair, and motioned me to a seat at her side.

“No, no,” I said, laughing. “At your feet, Princess; always at your feet,” and, casting myself upon a low footstool, I took her hand in mine.

“My life has been wasted,” she said mournfully. “My mother was French; my father an Imperial Councillor of Russia. My earlier life was passed at Moscow, and afterwards at the Court at Petersburg. I was forced by my father to marry the Prince, who, as you are well aware, is rich and powerful. But, ma foi! from the first he treated me cruelly. Within six months of our marriage he commenced to ill-use me brutally; indeed, I bear upon my body the scars of his violence. The world was débonnaire while I was triste and downcast, for I found he had a liaison with a French danseuse. I bore his insults and blows until I was in fear of my life; then I came here.”

“How could he be so cruel?” I cried in indignation.

“Ah, I have not told all, Vladimir,” she said with a sorrowful sigh. “The Prince plotted with his friend, Stepán Nekhlindoff, in order to obtain a divorce, but I thwarted their vile scheme. Nekhlindoff tried to compromise me, but I repelled his advances, for although I have so far abandoned my marriage vow as to love you while I am still wedded, I have done nothing by which my husband can obtain the freedom he seeks. Since I left Markovka I have wandered about, to Paris, Vienna, Brussels, with no protection against the dishonourable conspiracy. I grew tired of life—I—”

“You have a friend in me,” I interrupted.

“Ah, yes, my love,” she exclaimed, stroking my hair tenderly, and bending to kiss me. “Though I have been in the midst of luxury and gaiety, my life has been very dark and dreary. But happiness has now returned.”

“It gives me joy to hear you speak like this, Irene,” I said. “Nothing will, I hope, occur to part us, or cause our love to be less stronger than it is at this moment.”

“What can?” she asked quickly, raising her eyebrows. “We trust one another. I have money enough for both. What more?”

The horrible thought that the knife in my pocket must sooner or later be plunged into her heart flashed across my mind, causing me to shudder.

“No,” I replied with a feigned, hollow laugh, “I—it is only a foolish fancy on my part. My joy seems almost too perfect to be lasting.”

“I am yours; you are mine,” she said passionately. “We shall marry and live together always as happy as we are to-day.”

Twilight had faded, and it had grown almost dark. I had risen and was standing beside her chair, bending and kissing her soft cheek, when suddenly the door opened and the maid entered to light the lamps.