At the sound of this last name, to which I had artfully led up, Sophia sprang into a sitting posture and gave me a look of anger and fear.

"Who told you anything about M. Auguste?" she demanded in hoa.r.s.e tones. "What has he to do with me?"

"Nay, it is not you who ought to ask me that," I returned. "You may be a believer in his conjuring tricks, for aught I know. He may be more to you than a comrade, or even a prophet--more to you than I."

"Who told you that he was my comrade, as you call it?" the Princess insisted, refusing to be diverted from her point.

"No one," I said quite truthfully. "I should be glad to know that he was only that. But it is natural for me to feel some jealousy of all your friends."

The Princess appeared relieved by this admission. But this relief confirmed all my suspicions. I now felt certain that the medium was an important figure in the plot which I was trying to defeat. I saw, moreover, that however genuine my beautiful friend might be in her love for me and her desire to save my life, she had no intention of betraying the secrets of her fellow conspirators.

Her character presented an enigma almost impossible to solve. Perhaps it is not the part of a wise man ever to try to understand a woman.

Her motives must always be mysterious, even to herself. It is sufficient if one can learn to forecast her actions, and even that is seldom possible.

"Then you refuse my help?" I asked reproachfully.

"You cannot help me," was the answer. "At least, that is, unless you possess some power I have no idea of at present."

It was an ingenious turning of the tables. Instead of my questioning the Princess, she was questioning me, in effect.

I made what was perhaps a rash admission.

"I am not wholly powerless, at all events. There are few sovereigns in Europe whom I have not obliged at some time or other. Even the German Emperor, though I have more than once crossed his path in public matters, is my personal friend. In spite of his occasional political errors, he is a stainless gentleman in private life, and I am sure he would hear with horror of your position and the means by which you had been forced into it."

Sophia looked at me with an expression of innocent bewilderment which I could scarcely believe to be real.

"The German Emperor! But what has he to do with me?"

"He is said to have some influence with the Czar," I said drily.

My companion bit her lip.

"Oh, the Czar!" Her tone was scathing in its mixture of pity and indifference. "Every one has some influence with the Czar. But is there any one with whom Nicholas has influence?"

It was the severest thing I had ever heard said of the man whom an ironical fate has made master of the Old World.

Suddenly the manner of the Princess underwent a sudden change.

She rose to her feet and gave me a penetrating glance, a glance which revealed for the first time something of that commanding personality which had made this slight, exquisite creature for years one of the most able and successful of secret negotiators, and a person to be reckoned with by every foreign minister.

"You do not trust me, Andreas V----. It is natural. You do not love me. It is possible that it is my fault. But I have sworn to save your life, and I will do it in your own despite. In order that I may succeed, I will forget that I am a woman, and I will forget that you regard me as a criminal. Come here! I will show you into my oratory, into which not even my confidential maid is ever allowed to penetrate. Perhaps what you will see there may convince you that I am neither a traitor nor a Delilah."

With the proud step of an empress, she led the way into the adjoining room, which was a bedroom sumptuously enriched with everything that could allure the senses. The very curtains of the bed seemed to breathe out languorous odors, the walls were hung with ravishing groups of figures that might have come from a Pompeiian temple, the dressing-table was rich with gold and gems.

Without pausing for an instant the mistress of the chamber walked straight across it to a narrow door let into the farther wall, and secured by a tiny lock like that of a safe.

Drawing a small key from her bosom, the Princess inserted it in the lock, leaving me to follow in a state of the most intense expectation.

The apartment in which I found myself was a narrow, white-washed cell like a prison, lit only by the flames of two tall wax candles which stood on a table, or rather an altar, at the far end.

Besides the altar, the sole object in the room was a wooden step in front of it. Over the altar, in accordance with the rule of the Greek Church, there hung a sacred picture. And below, between the two candlesticks, there rested two objects, the sight of which fairly took away my breath.

One was a photograph frame containing a portrait of myself--how obtained I shall never know. The portrait was framed with immortelles, the emblems of death, and the artist had given my face the ghastly pallor and rigidity of the face of a corpse.

The other object on the altar was a small whip of knotted leather thongs.

Without uttering a word, without even turning her head to see if I had followed, the Princess Y---- knelt down on the step, stripped her shoulders with a singular determined gesture, and then, taking the knout in one hand, began to scourge the bare flesh.

CHAPTER XIX

THE SPIRIT OF MADAME BLAVATSKY

At the hour appointed by the Czar I presented myself at the Winter Palace to a.s.sist at the spiritualist experiments of M. Auguste.

I shall not attempt to describe the impression left by the weird scene in the Princess Y----'s oratory.

To those who do not know the Slav temperament, with its strange mixture of sensuality and devotion, of barbarous cruelty and over-civilized cunning, seldom far removed from the brink of insanity, the incident I have recorded will appear incredible. I have narrated it, simply because I have undertaken to narrate everything bearing on the business in which I was engaged. I am well aware that truth is stranger than fiction, and I should have little difficulty, if I were so disposed, in framing a story, full of plausible, commonplace incidents, which no one could doubt or dispute.

I have preferred to take a bolder course, knowing that although I may be discredited for a time, yet when historians in the future come to sift the secret records of the age, I shall be amply vindicated.

I shall only add that I did not linger a moment after the unhappy woman had begun her penance, if such it was, but withdrew from her presence and from the house without speaking a word.

The feelings with which I antic.i.p.ated my encounter with the medium were very different. Whatever might be my doubts with regard to the unfortunate Sophia--and I honestly began to think that the suicide of Menken had affected her brain--I had no doubt whatever that M.

Auguste was a thoroughly unscrupulous man.

The imperial servant to whom I was handed over at the entrance to the Czar's private apartments conducted me to what I imagine to have been the boudoir of the Czaritza, or at all events the family sitting room.

It was comfortably but plainly furnished in the English style, and was just such a room as one might find in the house of a London citizen, or a small country squire. I noticed that the wall-paper was faded, and the hearth-rug really worn out.

The Emperor of All the Russias was not alone. Seated beside him in front of the English grate was the beautiful young Empress, in whose society he finds a refuge from his greedy courtiers and often unscrupulous ministers, and who, I may add, has skilfully and successfully kept out of any entanglement in politics.

Rising at my entrance, Nicholas II. advanced and shook me by the hand.

"In this room," he told me, "there are no emperors and no empresses, only Mr. and Mrs. Nicholas."

He presented me to the Czaritza, who received me in the same style of simple friendliness, and then, pointing to a money-box which formed a conspicuous object on the mantel-shelf, he added:

"For every time the word 'majesty' is used in this room there is a fine of one ruble, which goes to our sick and wounded. So be careful, M. V----."

In spite of this warning I did not fail to make a good many contributions to the money-box in the course of the evening. In my intercourse with royalty I model myself on the British Premier Beaconsfield, and I regard my rubles as well spent.

We all three spoke in English till the arrival of M. Auguste, who knew only French and a few words of Russian. I remarked afterward that the spirit of Madame Blavatsky, a Russian by birth, who had spent half her life in England, appeared to have lost the use of both languages in the other world, and communicated with us exclusively in French.

The appearance of M. Auguste did not help to overcome my prejudice against him. He had too evidently made up for the part of the mystic.