Aladdin of London Part 26

"We shall decide that for ourselves. You visited her upon the barge of the German merchant, Petermann. He is now in custody and has confessed as much. What did she say to you when you were alone with her?"

"She asked me to help to set her father free."

"An honest admission--we shall do very well, I see. When she spoke of his excellency the Count, she said--"

"I am not afraid to tell you. She did not like him and asked me to take her away from Warsaw, disguised as my servant."

"That was not clever, sir. As if we should not have known--but I pa.s.s it by. You left her and then--"

"I spent the day with the Count and returned with him to the hotel at three o'clock in the morning."

"There was no one with him, then?"

"Yes, his valet was with him."

"Did you leave them together when you went to bed?"

"He always helped the Count to undress. I cannot remember where I left him."

"You have not a good memory, I perceive."

"Not for that which happened at three o'clock in the morning."

Zaniloff permitted the merest suspicion of a smile to lurk about the corners of a sensual mouth.

"It is difficult," he said dryly--and then, "your memory will be better later on. Did the girl tell you that his excellency would be a.s.sa.s.sinated?"

"You know very well that she did not."

"I know?"

"Certainly, you have had too much experience not to know."

"Most flattering--please do not mistake me. I am asking you these questions because I wish that justice shall be done. If you can do nothing to clear Lois Boriskoff, I am afraid that we shall have to flog her."

"That would be a cowardly thing to do. It would also be very foolish.

She has many friends both here and in England. I don't think they will forget her."

"Wild talk, Mr. Kennedy, very wild talk. I see that you will not help me. We must let the Governor know as much and he will decide. I warn you at the same time that it will go very hard with you if the Count should die--and as for this woman, we will try other measures. She must certainly be flogged."

"If you do that, I myself will see that her friends in England know about it. The Governor will never be so foolish--that is, if he wishes to save Mr. Gessner."

"Gessner--Gessner--I hear the name often--pardon me, I have not the honor of his acquaintance."

"Telegraph to the Minister at St. Petersburg and he will tell you who Mr. Gessner is. I think you would be wise to do so."

Zaniloff could make nothing of it. The cool effrontery of this mere stripling was unlike anything he had heard at the bureau in all the years he had served authority. Why, the bravest men had gone down on their knees to him before now and almost shrieked for mercy. And here was this bit of an English boy plucking the venerable beard of Terror as unconcernedly as though he were a sullen-eyed Cossack with a nagaika in his hand. a.s.suredly he could be no ordinary traveller. And why did he harp upon this name Gessner, Richard Gessner! Reflection brought it to Zaniloff's mind that he had heard the name before. Yes, it had been mentioned in a dossier from the Ministry of Justice. He thought again and recalled other circ.u.mstances. The Government had been anxious to do the man a service--they had commanded the arrest of the Boriskoffs--why, at this very Gessner's bidding! And had not the Count warned him to treat the young Englishman as his own son--merely to play a comedian's part and to frighten him before opening the doors with profuse apologies. Zaniloff did not like the turn affairs had taken. He determined to see the Governor-General without a moment's loss of time.

Meanwhile there could be no earthly reason why the girl should not be flogged. Whatever happened the Minister would approve that.

"It shall be done as you advise," he rejoined presently, the admission pa.s.sing for an excellent joke. "The telegram shall be dispatched immediately. While we are waiting for an answer I will command them to bring you some breakfast to my own private room. Meanwhile, as I say, the girl must be flogged."

Alban shrugged his shoulders.

"I did not believe that you could possibly be so foolish," he said.

It puzzled Zaniloff altogether. Searching that open face with eyes accustomed to read many human stories, he could discern neither emotion nor anger, but just an honest man's faith in his own cause and a sure belief that it must triumph. Whatever Alban might really feel, the sickening apprehension of which he was the victim, the almost overmastering desire to take this ruffian by the throat and strangle him as he sat, not a trace of it could be discerned either in his speech or his att.i.tude. "He stood before me like a dog which has barked and is waiting to bite," Zaniloff said afterwards. "I might as well have threatened to flog the statue of Sobiesky in the Castle gardens." This impression, however, he was careful to conceal from the prisoner.

Official dignity never argues--especially when it is getting the worst of the deal.

"My wisdom is not for us to discuss," he snapped; "please to remember that I am in authority here and allow no one to question what I do. You will remain in my room until I return, sir. Afterwards it must be as the Governor decides."

He took up his papers and whispering a few words to the stolid secretary he left the room and went clanking down the corridor. The officer who remained seemed princ.i.p.ally concerned in driving the flies from his bald head and from the doc.u.ments he compiled so laboriously. Stopping from time to time to shape a quill pen to his liking, he would write a few lines carefully, kill a number of flies, take a peep at Alban from beneath his s.h.a.ggy brows and then resume the cycle of his labors. Alban pitied him cynically. This labor of docketing scarred backs seemed wretchedly monotonous. He was really glad when the fellow spoke to him, in as amazing a combination of tongues as man had ever heard:

"Mein Herr--pardon--what shall you say--comment a dire--for the English--Moskowa?"

"We say Moscow, sir."

"Ah--Mosk--Mosk-nitchevo--je ne m'en souviens jamais."

He continued to write as though laboring under an incurable disappointment. That Alban knew what Moskowa meant was not surprising, for he had heard the word so often in Union Street. Here in this very courtyard, far below his windows, were the sons and the brothers of those who had preached revolution in England. How miserable they looked--great hordes of them, all crouching in the shadow of the wall to save their lacerated skins from the burning sunshine. Verily did they resemble sheep driven into pens for the slaughter. As for the Cossacks who moved in and out among them, there was hardly a moment which found their whips at rest. Standing or sitting, you could not escape the dreadful thongs--lashes of raw hide upon a core of wires, leaded at the end and cutting as knives. Sometimes they would strike at a huddled form as though they resented its mute confession of overwhelming misery. An upturned face almost invariably invited a cut which laid it open from forehead to chin. And not only this, but there were ordered floggings, one of which Alban must witness as he stood at the window above, too fascinated by the horror of the spectacle to move away and not unwilling to know the truth.

Many police a.s.sisted at this--driving their victims before them to a rude bench in the centre of the yard. There was neither strap nor triangle. They threw their man down and held him across the plank, gripping his wrists and ankles and one forcing his head to the floor.

The whip of a single lash, wired to cut and leaded everywhere, fell across the naked flesh with a sound of a cane upon a board. Great welts were left at the very first blow, torn flesh afterwards and sights not to be recounted. The most stolid were broken to shrieks and screams despite their resolutions. The laugh upon defiant lips became instantly a terrible cry seeming to echo the ultimate misery. As they did to these poor wretches so would they do to Lois, Alban said. He was giddy when a voice called him from the window and he almost reeled as he turned.

"Well, what do you want with me?"

"I am to take you to the cell of the girl Lois Boriskoff, mein Herr.

Please to follow me."

An official, well dressed in civilian's clothes, spoke to him this time and with a sufficient knowledge of the English language. The bald-headed secretary still snapped up the unconsidered insectile trifles which troubled his paper. Alban, his heart thumping audibly, followed the newcomer from the room and remembered only that he was going to Lois.

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE MEETING

They had imprisoned many of the women in one of the stables behind the great yard of the station. So numerous were the captives that the common cells had been full and overflowing long ago. Zaniloff, charged with the command to restore order in the city at any cost, cared not a straw what the world without might say of him. The rifle, the bayonet, the revolver, the whip--here were fine tools and proved. Let but a breath of suspicion frost the burnish of a reputation and he would have that man or woman at the bar, though arrest might cost a hundred lives. Thus it came about that those within the gates were a heterogeneous mult.i.tude to which all cla.s.ses had contributed. The milliner's a.s.sistant crouched side by side with the Countess, though she still feared to touch her robe. There were professors' daughters and dockers' wives, ladies from the avenue and ladies from the hovels. And just as in the great arena beyond the walls, so here Pride was the staff of the well-born, Prejudice of the weak.

Amid this trembling company, in the second of the stables, the gloom shrouding her from suspicious observation, none noticing so humble a creature, Alban found Lois and made himself known to her. The amiable civilian with his two or three hundred words of English seemed as guileless as a child when he announced Master Zaniloff's message and dwelt upon his honorable master's beneficence.

"You are to see this lady, sir, and to tell her that if she is honest with us we shall do our best to clear her of the charge. She knows what that will mean to name the others to us and then for herself the liberty. That is his excellency my master's decision."

"Much obliged to him," said Alban, dryly, and perhaps it was as well that Herr Amiability did not catch the tone of it.

"We have much prisoner," the good man went on, "much prisoner and not so much prison. That is as you say a perplexity. But it will be better; later in the time after. Here is the girl, this is the place."