Stolen Souls Part 18

Then she left the stranger, and crossed the lawn to go round to the front door, but at that moment the clock of Chiswick church chimed, and, finding the hour so late, she suddenly resolved to return home.

Later, when she heard of the tragedy, she was horrified to discover that she had actually aided the a.s.sa.s.sin, but resolved to preserve silence lest suspicion might attach itself to her.

She now identified the distorted features of the madwoman as those of the young man, and when I questioned her with regard to the bloodstained handkerchief, she explained how, in groping about the shrubbery in the dark, she had torn her hand severely on some thorns.

The cloud of suspicion that had rested so long upon Mabel is now removed, and we are again happy.

The carefully-devised plots and the devilish cunning that characterised all the murderess's movements appeared most extraordinary; nevertheless, in cases such as hers, they are not unheard of. Darya is now in Brookwood Asylum, hopelessly insane, for she is still suffering from that most terrible form of madness,--acute homicidal mania,--and is known to the attendants as "The Woman with a Blemish."

CHAPTER SEVEN.

THE SYLPH OF THE TERROR.

"Ah! you in England, here, are always _debonnaire_, while we in Charleroi are always _triste_, always."

The dark-eyed, handsome girl sighed, lying lazily back among the cushions of the boat, allowing the rudder-lines to hang so loosely that our course became somewhat erratic. I had been spending one of the hot afternoons of last July gossiping and drinking tea on the riverside lawn of a friend's house at Datchet, and now at sunset had taken for a row this pretty Belgian whom my hostess had introduced as Cecile Demage.

"Is this your first visit to London?" I asked, noticing she spoke English fluently, but with a pleasing accent.

"Oh no," she replied, laughing. "I have been here already two times. I like your country so very much."

"And you come here for pleasure--just for a little holiday?"

"Yes," she answered, lifting her long lashes for an instant. "Of course I travel for--for pleasure always."

Fixing my eyes upon her steadily, I remained silent, pulling long, slow strokes. The evening was calm and delightful, but the blood-red after-glow no longer reflected on the placid Thames, for already the purple haze was gathering.

"You know many Belgians in London, I suppose?" I said at last.

"Oh dear, no!" she answered, with a rippling laugh, toying with one of her gloves that lay on the cushion beside her. "True, I know some of the people at our Legation; but I come abroad to visit the English, not the Belgians."

"And you have never visited West Hill, Sydenham, mademoiselle?" I asked, resting upon the oars suddenly, and looking straight into her dark, wide-open eyes.

She started, but next second recovered her self-possession.

"No, not to my knowledge."

"And have you never met Fedor Nikiforovitch; has he never addressed you by your proper name, Sonia Ostroff?"

The colour left her face instantly, as she started up with a look of abject terror in her eyes.

"M'sieur is of the Secret Police!" she gasped hoa.r.s.ely, clenching her hands. "_Dieu_! Then I am betrayed!"

"No," I answered calmly. "I am aware that mademoiselle is an active member of the Narodnaya Volya, but, I, too, am a friend of the Cause;"

and I added a word which signifies indivisibility, and is the recognised pa.s.sword of the Circle of desperate Russian revolutionists to which she belonged. It gave her confidence, and she sank back upon the cushions, questioning me how I had recognised her.

"I heard you were masquerading in London," I said; "and among other members of the Circle who are here at the present moment are young Paul Tchartkoff, Sergius Karamasoff, and Ivan Petrovitch."

"But--but who are you, m'sieur, that you should know so much about the Narodnaya Volya? When we were introduced, I failed to catch your name distinctly."

"My name is Andrew Verney, and I am an English journalist."

"Andrew Verney! Ah! of course I have heard of you many times! You were the English newspaper correspondent who, while living at Warsaw, became one of Us, and wrote articles to your journal advocating the emanc.i.p.ation of our country and the inviolability of the individual and of his rights as a man. You a.s.sisted us in bringing our case vividly before the English people, and in raising money to carry on the propaganda. But, alas! the iron hand of the Minister of the Interior fell upon you."

"Yes," I said, laughing; "I was expelled with a cancelled pa.s.sport, and an intimation from the Press Bureau at Petersburg that whatever I wrote in future would not be allowed to enter Russia."

Our boat was drifting, so I bent again to the oars, and rowed back to the lawn of our hostess.

The beautiful girl, who, lolling back upon the saddlebags, commenced to chatter in French about mutual friends in Warsaw, in Moscow, and in Petersburg, was none other than Sonia Ostroff, known to every Nihilist in and out of Russia as "The Sylph of the Terror." Her slim figure, her childish face, her delicate complexion and charming dimples made her appear little more than a girl; yet I well knew how her bold, daring schemes had caused the Tzar Alexander to tremble. The daughter of a wealthy widow moving in the best society in Petersburg, she had become imbued with convictions that had induced her to join the Nihilists.

From that moment she had become one of their most active members, and on the death of her mother, devoted all the money she inherited to the Cause. Many were the remarkable stories I had heard of the manner in which she had arranged attempts upon the lives of the Tzar and his Ministers; how, on one occasion, with extraordinary courage, she had taken the life of a police spy with her own hand; and how cleverly she had always managed to elude the vigilance of the ubiquitous agents of the Third Section of the Ministry of the Interior. Yet, as she laughed lightly, and pulled the rudder-line sharply, bringing us up to the steps before our hostess's house, few would have suspected Cecile Demage, the _chic_, flippant daughter of a Belgian mine-owner, to be the same person as Sonia Ostroff, the renowned "Sylph of the Terror," who spent greater part of her time in hiding from the police in the underground cellar of a presumably disused house near the Ekaterinski in Petersburg.

Half an hour later we were sitting opposite each other at dinner, where she shone brilliantly as a conversationalist. Several persons were present who had met her in society in Brussels; but none suspected the truth--I alone held her secret.

When later that night we bade each other farewell at Waterloo Station, she managed to whisper, "I shall be at Fedor's on Thursday night at nine. Meet me there. Do not fail."

"Very well," I replied; and, allowing her well-gloved hand to rest in mine for a moment, she bade me _au revoir_, entered a cab, and was driven away.

As I walked into Fedor Nikiforovitch's handsomely-furnished drawing-room at Sydenham to keep my appointment, my host rose to greet me. He was tall, thin and slightly bent by age. In Warsaw I had known him as an active revolutionist, and, indeed, the men who were with him-- Tchartkoff, Petrovitch, and Karamasoff--were a trio of daring fellows, who, alone and unaided, had committed many startling outrages. Several others were in the room, and among them I noticed two ladies, Mascha Karelin and Vera Irteneff, whom I had frequently met at secret meetings of the Circle at Warsaw.

"Sonia told me you were coming," Fedor said gayly. "This is the final council. The attempt will be made to-morrow," he added in a whisper.

"The attempt? What do you mean?" I asked.

"It will all be explained in due course," he said, turning away to greet another member who at that moment arrived.

In a few moments, Sonia, in a striking evening toilet, and wearing a magnificent diamond necklet, entered smiling, being greeted enthusiastically on every hand. We exchanged a few words, then, when every one was seated in silent expectancy, "The Sylph of the Terror"

took up a position on the tiger's skin stretched before the hearth. The door having been closed, and precautions taken so that there should be no eavesdroppers at the windows that overlooked the flower-garden at the rear, in clear, distinct tones she addressed the a.s.semblage in Russian as "Fellow-councillors of the Narodnaya Volya." She referred to the manifesto of the Narodnoe Pravo, and said, "Autocracy, after receiving its most vivid expression and impersonation in the reign of the present Tzar, has with irrefutable clearness proved its impotence to create such an order of things as should secure our country the fullest and most regular developments of all her spiritual and material forces." Then, with a fire of enthusiasm burning in her dark, flashing eyes, she referred to the thousands of political prisoners, many of them their own relatives and friends, who had been banished without trial to Siberia, to rot in the dreaded silver mines of Nerchinsk, or die of fever in the filthy _etapes_ of the Great Post Road.

"Desperate cases require desperate remedies," she continued, glancing around her small audience. "Hundreds of our innocent comrades are at this moment being arrested in Warsaw, and hurried off to the Trans-Baikal without trial, merely because Gourko desires to curry favour with his Imperial master."

"Shame!" they cried, with one accord.

"He must die," e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Fedor.

"Shall we allow our brothers and our sisters to be s.n.a.t.c.hed from us without raising a hand to save them?" she asked excitedly. "No. Long enough have we been idle. To-morrow, here, in London, we shall strike such a blow for the liberty of Russia that the world will be convulsed."

"All is ready, sister," Fedor observed. "The arrangements for escape are perfect. By midnight to-morrow we shall have separated, and not even the bloodhounds of the Third Section will be able to trace us."

"Then let us see the sh.e.l.l," she said. Walking over to a bookcase, he touched a spring, and part of one of the rows of books flew open, disclosing a secret cupboard behind. The backs of the books were imitations, concealing a s.p.a.cious niche, from which the Nihilist drew forth a thick volume about seven inches long by five wide, bound in black cloth. It was an imitation of a popular edition of Charles Lamb's works.

The bomb was in the form of a book!

Sonia, into whose delicate hands he gave it, examined it critically, with a grim smile of satisfaction, then placed it carefully upon a little Moorish coffee-stool at her side.