The Victorian Rogues MEGAPACK ®. Морис Леблан
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that the scoundrelly Baron had attempted to take my life by such dastardly trickery in order to secure that all-powerful document?
That it was of greatest value to any revolutionist I knew quite well, for upon it was the signature of the Minister of the Interior, and its bearer, immune from arrest or interference by the police, might come and go in Russia without let or hindrance.
Were they Russians? Certainly the language they had spoken was not Russian, but it might have been Polish. Where was the young man who had been my fellow-victim?
Loss of this special permit caused me considerable inconvenience, for I had to go to Moscow, and the Terror raging there, I had to get another permit before I could pass and repass the military cordon.
Yes, Julie Rosier was a mystery. Indeed, the whole affair was a complete enigma.
I duly returned to London, after assisting Bindo in trying to make acoup that was unfortunately in vain, and then learnt that the body of an unknown young man in evening dress had been found in the river Crouch in Essex, and from the photograph shown me at Scotland Yard I identified it as that of my fellow-guest.
Through the whole year the adventure has sorely puzzled me, and only the other day light was thrown upon it in the following manner—
I was in Petersburg again, when I received a polite note from General Zuroff, the chief of police, requesting me to call upon him. The summons caused me considerable apprehension I must admit.
On entering his room at the Ministry, he gave me a cigarette, and commenced to chat. Then suddenly he touched a bell, another door opened, and I was amazed at seeing before me, between two grey-coated police-officers, a woman—Julie Rosier!
For an instant she glared at me as though she saw an apparition. Then, with a loud scream, she fainted.
“Ah!” exclaimed Zuroff. “Then what is reported is correct—eh? You and your friend the Baron enticed this Englishman to your house in London, for you knew by some means that he carried the order of the Minister allowing the bearer free passage everywhere in Russia. You saw that if you merely stole it he would give information, and it would be immediately cancelled. Therefore you cleverly plotted to take his life and make it appear as a case of suicide.” Then, with a wave of his hand, he said, “Take the prisoner back to the fortress.”
The woman uttered no word. She only fixed her big dark eyes upon me with an expression of abject terror, and then the guards led her out.
From a drawer Zuroff took the precious document that had been stolen from me, saying—
“Julie Rosier—or Sophie Markovitch, as her real name is—was arrested in a house in the Nevski yesterday, while the Baron was discovered at the Hôtel d’Angleterre. Both are most violent revolutionists, and to them is due the terrible rioting in Moscow a few months ago. The Baron was hand in hand with Gapon and his colleagues, but escaped to England, and has been there for nearly a year, until, as the outcome of the dastardly plot against you, he altered his appearance, and returned as George Ewart, chauffeur to Baron Bindo di Ferraris of Rome. The arrests yesterday were very smartly made.”
“But how do you know the details of the attempt upon me?”
“All men can be bought at a price. They were watched constantly while in London. Besides, one of your fellow-guests of that night—revolutionists all of them—recently turned police spy and reported the facts. It was he who gave us information regarding the whereabouts of Sophie and the Baron.”
“But another man—a young fellow with fair hair—ate some of the plums from the snap-dragon and died.”
“Yes; he was young Ivan Kinski—a Pole, who, though a Terrorist, was suspected by his friends of being a spy. You took one plum only, while he probably took more. At any rate, you had a very narrow escape. But you at least have the satisfaction of knowing that Julie will never again fascinate, and the Baron will never again be given an opportunity of preparing his fatal snap-dragon.”
My friendliness with Zuroff stood us in good stead; for, a week later, Bindo and Blythe contrived to get a very pretty diamond necklet and pair of earrings from a lady in Petersburg, which fetched six hundred golden louis in Amsterdam.
CHAPTER XI
THE PERIL OF PIERRETTE
I
CONCERNS A STRANGE CONSPIRACY
Dusk was falling early in Piccadilly as I sat in the car outside the Royal Automobile Club, awaiting the reappearance of my master.
The grey February afternoon had been bitterly cold, and for an hour I had waited there half frozen. Since morning Count Bindo di Ferraris and myself had been on the road, coming up from Shrewsbury, and, tired out, I was anxious to get into the garage.
As chauffeur to a trio of perhaps the most expert “crooks” in Europe, my life was the reverse of uneventful. I was constantly going hither and thither, often on all-night journeys, and always moving rapidly from place to place, often selling the old car and buying a new one, and constantly on the look-out for police-traps of more than one variety.
Only a week previously the Count had handed me five hundred pounds in Bank of England notes, telling me to sell the forty horse-power six-cylinder “Napier,” which, still a magnificent car, might easily be “spotted,” and to purchase a “sixty” of some other make. By that I knew that some fresh scheme was afoot, and our run to Shrewsbury and Barmouth, in North Wales, had been to test the capabilities of the new “Mercedes” I had purchased a couple of days previously, and in which I now sat.
It was certainly as fine a car as was on the road, its open exhaust a little noisy perhaps, but capable of getting up a tremendous speed when occasion required. A long, dark-red body, it was fitted with every up-to-date convenience, even to the big electric horn placed in the centre of the radiator, an instrument which emitted a deep warning blast unlike the tone of air-horns, and sounding as long as ever the finger was kept upon the button placed on the driving-wheel.
In every way the car was perfect. I fancy that I know something about cars, but even with my object to lower the price I failed to discover any defect in her in any particular.
Suddenly the Count, in a big motor coat and cap, emerged from the Club, ran hurriedly down the steps, and mounting into the seat beside me, said—
“To Clifford Street, Ewart, as quick as you can. I want to have five minutes’ talk with you.”
So next instant we glided away into the traffic, and I turned up Bond Street until I reached his chambers, where, when Simmons the valet came out to mind the car, I ascended to Count Bindo’s pretty sitting-room.
“Sit down, Ewart,” exclaimed the debonnair young man, who was so thoroughly a cosmopolitan, and who in his own chambers was known as Mr. Bellingham, the son of a man who had suddenly died after making a fortune out of certain railway contracts in the Argentine. “Have a drink;” and he poured me out a peg of whisky and soda. He always treated me as his equal when alone. At first I had hated being in his service, yet now the excitement of it all appealed to my roving nature, and though I profited little from a monetary point of view, save the handsome salary I was paid for keeping a still tongue between my teeth, I nevertheless found my post not at all an incongenial one.
“Look here, Ewart,” the Count exclaimed, with scarcely a trace of his Italian accent, after he had lit a cigarette: “I want to give you certain instructions. We have a very intricate and ticklish affair to deal with. But I trust you implicitly, after that affair of the pretty Mademoiselle Valentine. I know you’re not the man to lose your head over a pretty face. Only fools do that. One can seek out a pretty face when one has made a pile. You and I want money—not toys, don’t we?”
I nodded assent, smiling at his bluntness.
“Well, if this thing comes off, it will mean a year’s acceptable rest to us—not rest within four walls, we can easily obtain that, but rest out on one or other of the Greek islands, or on the Bosphorus, or somewhere where we shall be perfectly safe,” he said. “Now I want