Читать книгу The Price of Power - William Le Queux - Страница 13

Next day was Wednesday.

At half-past five in the afternoon I was seated in my room at the Embassy, busy copying out the last of my despatches which were to be sent that week by Foreign Office messenger to London.

The messenger himself, in the person of my friend Captain Hubert Taylor, a thin, long-limbed, dark-haired cosmopolitan, was stretched lazily in my chair smoking a cigarette, impatient for me to finish, so that the white canvas bag could be sealed and he could get away.

The homeward Nord express to Ostend was due to leave at six o’clock; therefore he had not much time to spare.

“Do hurry up, old man,” he urged, glancing at his watch. “If it isn’t important, keep it over until Wednesday week. Despatches are like wine, they improve with keeping.”

“Shut up!” I exclaimed, for I saw I had a good deal yet to copy—the result of an important inquiry regarding affairs south of the Caspian, which was urgently required at Downing Street. Our Consul in Baku had been travelling for three months in order to supply the information.

“Well, if I miss the train I really don’t mind, my dear Colin. I can do quite well with a few days’ rest. I was down in Rome ten days ago; and, besides, I only got here the night before last.”

“I do wish you’d be quiet, Taylor,” I cried. “I can’t write while you chatter.”

So he lit a fresh cigarette and repossessed himself in patience until at last I had finished my work, stuck down the long envelope with the printed address, and placed it with thirty or forty other letters into the canvas bag; this I carefully sealed with wax with the Embassy seal.

“There you are!” I exclaimed at last. “You’ve plenty of time for the train—and to spare.”

“I shouldn’t have had if I hadn’t hurried you up, my dear boy. Everyone seems asleep here. It shows your chief’s away on leave. You should put in a day in Paris. They’re active there. It would be an eye-opener for you.”

“Paris isn’t Petersburg,” I laughed.

“And an attaché isn’t a foreign service messenger,” he declared. “Government pays you fellows to look ornamental, while we messengers have to travel in hot haste and live in those rocking sleeping-cars of the wagon-lits.”

“Horribly hard work to spend one’s days travelling from capital to capital,” I said, well knowing that this remark to a foreign service messenger is as a red rag to a bull.

“Work, my dear fellow. You try it for a month and see,” Taylor snapped.

“Well,” I asked with a laugh, “any particular news in London?” for the messengers are bearers of all the diplomatic gossip from embassy to embassy.

“Oh, well—old Petheridge, in the Treaty Department, is retiring this month, and Jack Scrutton is going to be transferred from Rome to Lima. Some old fool in the Commons has, I hear, got wind of that bit of scandal in Madrid—you know the story, Councillor of Embassy and Spanish Countess—and threatens to put down a question concerning it. I hear there’s a dickens of a row over it. The Chief is furious. Oh!—and I saw your Chief in the St. James’s Club the day I left London. He’d just come from Windsor—been kissing hands, or something. Well,” he added, “I suppose I may as well have some cigarettes before I go, even though you don’t ask me. But they are always pro bono, I know. The Embassy at Petersburg is always noted for its hospitality and its cigarettes!” And he emptied the contents of my cigarette-box into the capacious case he took from his pocket.

“Here you are,” I said, taking from my table another sealed despatch bearing a large blue cross upon it, showing that it was a confidential document in cipher upon affairs of State.

“Oh, hang!” he cried. “I didn’t know you had one of those.”

And then, unbuttoning his waistcoat, he fumbled about his waist, and at last placed it carefully in the narrow pocket of the belt he wore beneath his clothes, buttoning the flap over the pocket.

“Well,” he said at last, putting on his overcoat, “so long, old man. I’ll just have time. I wonder what old Ivanoff, in the restaurant-car, will have for dinner to-night? Borstch, of course, and caviare.”

“You fellows have nothing else to think about but your food,” I laughed.

“Food—yes, it’s railway-food with a vengeance in this God-forgotten country. Lots to drink, but nothing decent to eat.”

And taking the little canvas bag he shook my hand heartily and strode out.

I stood for some time gazing through the open window out upon the sunlit Neva across to the grim fortress on the opposite bank—the prison of many terrible tales.

My thoughts were running, just as they had run all day, upon that strange suspicion which the Emperor had confided to me. It seemed too remarkable, too strange, too amazing to be true.

And again before my vision there arose the faces of those two refined and innocent ladies, Madame de Rosen and her daughter, who had been so suddenly hurried away to a living tomb in that far-off Arctic region. I remembered what the little Grand Duchess had told me, and wondered whether her allegations were really true.

I was wondering if she would permit me to see those incriminating letters which Madame had given to her for safe-keeping, for at all costs I felt that, for the safety of the Emperor and the peace and prosperity of Russia, the country should be rid of General Serge Markoff.

And yet the difficulties were, I knew, insurmountable. His Majesty, hearing of these constant plots being discovered and ever listening to highly-coloured stories of the desperate attempts of revolutionists, naturally believed his personal safety to be due to this man whom he had appointed as head of the police of the Empire. To any word said against Serge Markoff he turned a deaf ear, and put it down to jealousy, or to some ingenious plot to withdraw from his person the constant vigilance which his beloved Markoff had established. More than once I had been bold enough to venture to hint that all those plots might not be genuine ones; but I had quickly understood that such suggestion was regarded by the Emperor as a slur cast upon his favourite official and personal friend.

The more I reflected, the more unwise seemed that sudden outburst of my pretty little companion in the winter garden on the night before. If anyone had overheard her threat, then no doubt it would reach the ears of that man who daily swept so many innocent persons into the prisons and étapes beyond the Urals. I knew, too well, of those lists of names which he placed before the Emperor, and to which he asked the Imperial signature, without even giving His Majesty an opportunity to glance at them.

Truly, those were dark days. Life in Russia at that moment was a most uncertain existence, for anyone incurring the displeasure of General Markoff, or any of his friends, was as quickly and effectively removed as though death’s sword had struck them.

Much perturbed, and not knowing how to act in face of what the Emperor had revealed to me, I was turning from the window back to my writing-table, when one of the English footmen entered with a card.

“Oh, show him up, Green. And bring some cigarettes,” I said.

My visitor was Ivan Hartwig, the famous chief of the Russian Criminal Detective Service—an entirely distinct department from the Secret Police.

A few moments later he was ushered in by Green, and, bowing, took the hand I offered him.

A lean, bony-faced man, of average height, alert, clean-shaven, and aged about forty-five. His hair was slightly streaked with grey, and his eyes, small and shrewd, beamed behind a pair of round gold-rimmed pince-nez. I had never seen him in glasses before, but I only supposed that he had suddenly developed myopia for some specific purpose. As he smiled in greeting me, his narrow jaws widened, displaying an even row of white teeth, while the English he spoke was as perfect as my own. At that moment, in his glasses, his black morning-coat and grey trousers, he looked more like a grave family physician than a police officer whose career was world-famous.

And yet he was a man of striking appearance. His broad white forehead, his deep-set eyes so full of fire and expression, his high, protruding cheek-bones, and his narrowing chin were all characteristics of a man of remarkable power and intelligence. His, indeed, was a face that would arrest attention anywhere; hence the hundred and one disguises which he so constantly adopted.

“I have had private audience of His Majesty this afternoon, Mr Trewinnard,” he said, as he took the chair I offered him. “He has sent me to you. You wish to see me.”

“Yes,” I said. “I need your assistance.”

“So His Majesty has told me, but he explained nothing of the affair. He commanded me to place myself entirely at your disposal,” replied the man, who, in himself, was a man of mystery.

His nationality was obscure to most people, yet we at the Embassy knew that he was in reality a British subject, and that Ivan Hartwig was merely the Russian equivalent of Evan Hardwicke.

I handed him the box of cigarettes which Green had replenished, and took one myself.

As he slowly lit his, I recollected what a strange career he had had. Graduating from Scotland Yard, where on account of his knowledge of German and Russian he had been mainly employed in the arrest of alien criminals in England, he had for several years served under Monsieur Goron, Préfet of Police of Paris, and after being attached to the Tzar on one of his visits to the French capital, had been personally invited by the Emperor to become head of the Criminal Investigation Department of Russia.

He was a quiet-spoken, alert, elusive, but very conscientious man, who had made a study of crime from a psychological standpoint, his many successes being no doubt due to his marvellously minute examination of motives and his methodical reasoning upon the most abstruse clues. There was nothing of the ordinary blunt official detective about him. He was a man of extreme refinement, an omnivorous reader and a diligent student of men. He was a passionate collector of coins, a bachelor, and an amateur player of the violin. I believe that he had never experienced what fear was, and certainly within my own knowledge, he had had a dozen narrow escapes from the vengeance of the Terrorists. Once a bomb was purposely exploded in a room into which he and his men went to arrest two students in Moscow, and not one present escaped death except Hartwig himself.

And as he now sat there before me, so quiet and attentive, blinking at me through those gold-rimmed pince-nez, none would certainly take him for the man whose hairbreadth escapes, constant disguises, exciting adventures and marvellous successes in the tracking of criminals all over Europe had so often amazed the readers of newspapers the world over.

“Well, Mr Hartwig,” I said in a low voice, after I had risen and satisfied myself that Green had closed the door, “the matter is one of strictest confidence—a suspicion which I may at once tell you is the Emperor’s own personal affair. To myself alone he has confided it, and I requested that you might be allowed to assist me in finding a solution of the problem.”

“I’m much gratified,” he said. “As an Englishman, you know, I believe, that I am ever ready to serve an Englishman, especially if I am serving the Emperor at the same time.”

“The inquiry will take us far afield, I expect—first to England.”

“To England!” he exclaimed. “For how long do you anticipate?”

“Who knows?” I asked. “I can only say that it will be a very difficult and perhaps a long inquiry.”

“And how will the department proceed here?”

“Your next in command will be appointed in your place until your return. The Emperor arranged for this with me yesterday. Therefore, from to-morrow you will be free to place yourself at my service.”

“I quite understand,” he said. “And now, perhaps, you will in confidence explain exactly the situation, and the problem which is presented,” and he settled himself in his chair in an attitude of attention.

“Ah! that, I regret, is unfortunately impossible. The Emperor has entrusted the affair to me, and to me alone. I must direct the inquiry, and you will, I fear, remain in ignorance—at least, for the present.”

“In other words, you will direct and I must act blindly—eh?” he said in a rather dubious voice. “That’s hardly satisfactory to me, Mr Trewinnard, is it?—hardly fair, I mean.”

“I openly admit that such an attitude as I am compelled to adopt is not fair to you, Hartwig. But I feel sure you will respect the Emperor’s confidence, and view the matter in its true light. The matter is a personal one of His Majesty’s, and may not be divulged. He has asked me to tell you this frankly and plainly, and also that he relies upon you to assist him.”

My words convinced the great detective, and he nodded at last in the affirmative.

“The problem I alone know,” I went on. “His Majesty has compelled me to swear secrecy. Therefore I am forbidden to tell you. You understand?”

“But I am not forbidden to discover it for myself?” replied the keen, wary official.

“If you do, I cannot help it,” was my reply.

“If I do,” he said, “I promise you faithfully, Mr Trewinnard, that His Majesty’s secret, whatever it is, shall never pass my lips.”