POUBALOV SUCCEEDS.

Her indecision was but momentary. Every nerve tingling with apprehension, her arms straining to embrace her lover and allay his suffering, she threw open the door at her right hand. Dusty furniture, faded hangings confronted her, nothing else. Aroused by the disappointment to a fever of anxiety and energy, she laid her hand upon the other door, and above the rattling of the knob she heard again the faint moan. The door was locked, and it merely creaked complainingly when she exerted all the pressure she could bring to bear against it.

She must work quickly. Holding the candle parallel to the floor, she allowed several drops of the melted tallow to fall, and on them she fastened her tiny torch upright. Then she applied her keys, one after the other, to the lock. It was a commonplace lock, a boot-buttoner would have worked it, and the most commonplace key in her collection at last turned freely and shot back the bolt. She threw the door open and rushed in, and as she passed, her flying skirts whisked out the candle flame and she was in darkness, but in the flashing glance she had had of the room she had seen the figure of a man bound to a chair, a cloth wound about his head and across his mouth.

Clara did not seek the prisoner in the darkness. All impulse to rush forward and throw her arms about him had vanished; in its place was an icy chill at the heart and an infinite sob that lodged in her throat and would not out. Hastily still but with nerveless limbs she stooped and felt for the candle, and, having found it, she again brought its wick to flickering life and raised it from the floor. Standing then upon the threshold, one hand clutching the jamb, she made certain that the fleeting vision of surprise and disappointment was bitter and amazing reality. The man bound upon the chair was old Dexter.

He turned upon her his blinking eyes, rendered sightless for the moment by the mild glare of the candle flame. He could stir no other part of his body by so much as a hair's breadth. A long rope was coiled many times about him, binding his legs to the chair rungs, his arms to his side, and his head to the back of the chair. A pitiful groan gurgled again in his throat as Clara held up the candle and looked at him.

She stood thus not longer than a second, and then, having placed the candle in a cup that stood on the mantel, she sought to loose him. That he was concerned in some way with Ivan's disappearance she could not doubt, but she allowed herself no thought or hesitation on that account. His evident suffering appealed to her, and she plied her fingers hard and fast to undo the rope. The knot was at his back and it had not been drawn extremely taut, the numerous coils in themselves being almost sufficient to hold the prisoner in his place. Very shortly, therefore, she had the free ends of the rope in hand, and she unwound them from Dexter's arms, still standing behind his back and working above his head. When with his own hands he began to loose the coils from his lower limbs, she untied the handkerchief that held the gag in his mouth, and Dexter was free.

He arose trembling. His limbs were stiff with long constraint and he steadied himself by grasping the back of the chair and leaning upon it. Breathing heavily and muttering unintelligible curses he turned slowly about and peered into Clara's eyes.

"Ha!" he gasped, "it's you, is it!"

His eyes, till then glowing with the rage of a baffled will, now flamed with ungovernable hate. Clara, all her resolution gone, her very life seeming to depart from her, yet stood ready to do what she could to help him, when with a passionate shriek he suddenly extended his thin quivering hands and seized her violently by the throat. Taken by surprise, her nervous energy exhausted by the long strain and its attendant disappointments, Clara made but slight resistance. Dexter clutched her with the desperate strength of a maniac and pushed her back against the wall.

What with the noise they made in moving across the floor, and Dexter's snarling curses, she did not hear the sound of rapidly approaching steps along the corridor; but just as the frenzied old man had pressed her against the wall, and when it seemed as if his fingers would lock inextricably upon her throat, Poubalov dashed into the room, laid hold of Dexter, wrenched him away from her, picked him up bodily, bore him screaming across the chamber and threw him heavily upon a bed. Then he placed his hand over the old man's mouth and looked around. Clara was now held hard and fast by another man, and although Poubalov's eyes glittered with a fierce light, he made no effort to interfere. Paul Palovna appeared in the doorway, his weary face glowing with joy as he looked upon his friend restored at last to the arms of her who loved him.

After a moment Strobel raised his head, and Clara, still embracing him, followed his eyes with her own, almost unbelieving that this meeting was reality. She turned her gaze with Ivan's to where Poubalov sat on the bed forcibly quieting the ravings of old Dexter.

"Miss Hilman," said the spy in his deepest tones, "you have been the hardest adversary I ever encountered. Last evening you gave me two alternatives of action. You told me to take you to your lover, or you would pursue me relentlessly. You have made it a desperately hard task for me, but to some extent at least I have succeeded in evading both alternatives, and have, instead, brought your lover to you."

Clara turned her wondering eyes to Ivan's for confirmation and explanation.

"It is true, dearest," he said. "We owe my deliverance to Poubalov, and without his efforts I shudder to think what would have happened to me."

"Is it possible," asked Clara in a subdued voice, "that you have really been trying to find Ivan all along?"

"Miss Hilman," replied Poubalov, "until this Monday morning I did not know where Mr. Strobel was, and I had not the least suspicion of the truth until late last Friday night."

"Let me sit down," said Clara faintly, "I cannot grasp it all. Tell me, Ivan."

Ivan had conducted her to the chair wherein she had found Dexter a prisoner, and at her last words Poubalov turned away his head with a bitter smile. Not even yet would she trust him to speak the truth!

"We owe our separation," said Ivan, "to the villain who lies there under Poubalov's hand and to him alone. To Poubalov we owe the deliverance. This man Dexter, Clara, is a money lender of the most outrageous type. Your uncle, to tide over a business depression, borrowed nearly a hundred thousand dollars from him. This debt was due to Dexter two days after what was to have been our wedding. I am telling you what Poubalov learned after his suspicions were attracted in the right direction. Tell her, my friend! You can do it better than I."

"Miss Hilman will not believe me," replied Poubalov.

"Oh, but I will!" cried Clara starting from the chair impulsively as she realized the situation. She went to the bed where the spy still sat with his hand over Dexter's mouth, and held out her hand. "Won't you forgive me?" she faltered; "I know I have cruelly misjudged you."

Poubalov raised her hand to his lips and was about to answer when Dexter, the pressure removed from his mouth, scrambled to his knees, clinging to the Russian for support, and screamed, "Pay me! pay me! you're not married yet and you've got to pay me! I'll ruin Mat Pembroke! Pay me! I'll——"

The old man choked, pawed with both palsied hands at his collar and would have fallen from the bed if Poubalov had not turned hastily from Clara and caught him. Clara shrank away, not terrified but shocked at Dexter's appearance, while Palovna hurried across the room to lend a hand.

"He is dying!" exclaimed Clara faintly.

"No, Miss Hilman, not dying," responded Poubalov quickly, "but he is a very sick man. Thanks, Paul Palovna, but I can get on better with him alone. You may go ahead of me, if you please, and try to find a physician——"

"I saw a doctor's sign near the street corner," interrupted Palovna.

"Summon him at once, then," said Poubalov who was bearing old Dexter as tenderly as a nurse might carry a sick child; "I will await you at the door and," addressing Clara, "be with you here in a moment if you would hear the hidden history of your troubles."

"Better here, sweetheart," whispered Strobel, "here where I passed my week of death than in any other place!"

It was several minutes before Poubalov returned. He carried Dexter not only to the door but through the street to the physician's house where medical skill was promptly applied with a view to restoring the miser's wreck of a body to something like life. If Dexter's course had run tranquilly he might, perhaps, have lingered like a noxious weed, for a long time upon the earth, but after the complex shocks of disappointment, imprisonment and fear, he had thrown the total of his nervous and physical energies into that mad attack upon Clara. There remained, then, but the dregs of his vicious vitality, and these sustained him less than the length of the night. He was still alive but the end was plainly in sight when Poubalov left him to rejoin the lovers.

"Miss Hilman," he said the moment he came in, "your judgment of me has been marvellously correct. It is true that you have erred in detail and believed me deceiving you when I was doing my utmost to put the truth before you; but it is impossible for me to be straightforward. Mr. Strobel has said that his deliverance is due to me; that is true, but no credit is due me for generosity or nobility of conduct. What I have done in the way of searching for him and restoring him to liberty, has been done entirely in accordance with my nature. My desire to appear well in your eyes might lead me to vain reflections on what my nature might have been if the circumstances of my life had been other than they were, but past circumstances cannot be changed and nothing can palliate the fact that long practice as a detecter of stealthy criminals has made me habitually devious in my methods."

"Mr. Poubalov," Clara began gently, but the Russian would not let her utter the deprecating words that were on her lips.

"I could not change my methods," he said, "and moreover, there were circumstances connected with this matter that made it impossible for me to take you fully into my confidence. Don't you recall how I refused to answer, or evaded your questions? I would not lie to you, and I could not tell you the truth, for I was charged with a message from the czar to Mr. Strobel and to none other could I give it, and not to him unless I were satisfied of certain things, which, until Litizki's attempt upon my life were in doubt."

"You must have suffered keenly," said Clara softly; "tell me all now if you can."

"His imperial majesty, whom God preserve," resumed Poubalov, "saw fit to effect a complete restoration of the estates of the Strobel family, which had been confiscated on account of supposed treason, and to recall all the members of the family from exile. There was but one doubt in his august mind, and that related to your lover, Ivan. If he were engaged in sending pernicious literature to Russia, or in any other way fomenting the discontent that affects some of our people, the decree of restoration could not issue. I came to America solely to discover what Ivan Strobel was doing and thinking. I could not leave the country until I had found him unless I chose to disregard the wishes of my sovereign. Therefore, when he disappeared, I bent every energy to finding him. It is the habit of men like Litizki to invest me in their imaginations with extraordinary if not superhuman powers, and it is a part of my policy to encourage their delusion. But I am only an ordinary man, Miss Hilman, and in your hands I have proved to be as weak as the weakest."

He paused and looked somberly at the floor.

"I have been sadly puzzled by this case," he continued after a moment without raising his eyes; "nothing ever seemed so impenetrable a mystery. I was sincere in thinking the Nihilists had had something to do with it. After seeing you I was certain that no other woman could have led Strobel away; but I went to New York for much the same reason that you did, I suppose, hoping for some clew. I had about given up the Nihilistic theory when Litizki's assault and some inquiries I made shortly after, set that at rest completely. When Billings called at your house I determined to track him. Why not tell you then about it? Ask yourself if you would have believed me. You would have said that I was already in league with Billings."

"I did think so," murmured Clara guiltily.

"And I presume you thought I was afraid to face him. Yes? Then you see now that I had to operate alone. I was hiding in the shrubbery when he left your house. It was dark, but you lingered at the gate and so prevented me from leaving my place of concealment until Billings had got so far away that I could not find him. But I had seen his face. I readily saw that Litizki was following me that night and I purposely gave him a chase in order to mask my real purpose.

"When we left the train in the Park Square Station after our return from New York on Friday evening, I recognized Billings among those upon the station platform. I left you abruptly to follow him. He waited for the next New York train which followed us in directly, for we were late, you remember, and there met the wretch whom you found imprisoned here. I will not enter into the details of my all-night watching and inquiring, but will confine myself to the results. First, to jump over several steps, I found that Dexter was going to pack Billings off to Europe, and I followed to the steamer, hoping for a chance to speak with Billings, for I can usually worm or frighten secrets from guilty men. Dexter stuck closely to him, however, and I returned from a trip to Boston Light having seen both Billings and Litizki in the steerage."

"Litizki!" exclaimed Clara.

"Yes. By tracking Dexter and employing my usual methods, I got acquainted with his man, Patterson. It was he who overcame Mr. Strobel in the closed carriage a week ago to-day, and who left him there bound and stupefied by a drug that he had forced down his throat while he went through the Park Square Station to give color to the theory that Dexter gave to the police that Strobel had gone to New York. Dexter at first declared that he had seen Strobel buy his ticket, but later he weakened on that point, saying he might have been mistaken. He had said enough for Detective Bowker, however, and the police investigation was pursued half heartedly.

"Well, I looked up Dexter's affairs and I found that he had a grip on Mr. Pembroke."

"Don't tell me my uncle was guilty of——"

"No, Miss Hilman," interrupted Poubalov, "Mr. Pembroke had nothing to do with the abduction of Mr. Strobel. Dexter is the one villain in the case, and although Mr. Pembroke's conduct may be open to question in one respect, criticism would be finical for I don't see how he could have acted otherwise. I shall have to go back a long way now, but I will be brief. Matthew Pembroke had a brother, Charles, and a sister, Sophie. You, Miss Hilman, are her daughter. You know, of course, the family difference and the occasion of it. Your mother married against the wishes of your Uncle Charles, her elder brother and her guardian, and when she was left a widow he declined to help her. Your Uncle Matthew was kinder, and when she died he took you into his own home. Charles was apparently relentless to the end, and there was never any communication between you and him; but when he died, a short time ago, it was found that he had remembered you in his will. Two days before the wedding day Mr. Pembroke was notified that you were heiress to one hundred thousand dollars if you were unmarried. The will provided that in the event of your being a maiden, the entire sum was to be held by Matthew Pembroke, and administered by him in your interest. If you were married, twenty-five thousand dollars was to be set aside for you, and the balance was to go to educational institutions specifically named.

"Mr. Pembroke was worrying about his obligation to Dexter, which he could not meet, and in his fretting he mentioned this to Dexter. He did not tell you at first, because he feared you might think you ought to postpone your wedding, and he did not regard such etiquette as necessary. Without saying a word to Pembroke, this wretch, Dexter, plotted and effected the abduction, thus compelling you to remain a maiden. The bequest was immediately available and he brought all possible pressure to bear upon Mr. Pembroke to make use of it for wiping out the debt. It was absolute ruin to him if he did not. Mr. Pembroke suspected Dexter, but what could he do? He had nothing but improbable conjecture to work upon, and Dexter applied the screws mercilessly. They went to New York to make arrangements for collecting the inheritance. While there they were both in terror lest you discover the truth, for once at least you saw them with the man who could have revealed the financial secret of the situation. You remember looking in at the hotel entrance and seeing Dexter, your uncle and a third man walking in the corridor? The third man was the executor of your Uncle Charles' estate, and Dexter walked him out of your sight as quickly as possible, lest troublesome questions should be asked.

"It all came down to this, at last, that with your signature to-day to a document that the executors of the estate had prepared, and which you would have signed readily at your uncle's request, the money would have been turned over. The document came in the first mail, but Dexter did not turn up, and Mr. Pembroke could not find him. That was because, shortly after breakfast, I came here and found the villain, at last, giving Strobel sufficient nourishment to keep him alive. I bound him to the chair, but didn't release Strobel at the moment. After a mental struggle that I will not describe, I had determined to take him to you, Miss Hilman, and I was too proud to permit my plans to be balked. Moreover, I believed your uncle guilty, and I was determined that everybody who had been concerned in making you unhappy, should suffer the most extreme tortures that I could inflict. I had already bought and frightened Patterson. It was through him that I discovered this place, a hotel Dexter had seized for debt. After I had succeeded in eluding your pursuit this morning, I attacked Mr. Pembroke. I spent nearly the whole afternoon with him, and, to be brief, I got the story from him and drove him to the verge of insanity. He does not know yet what happened to Strobel, although he is aware that he is safe.

"Having thus punished Mr. Pembroke, unjustly I will admit, to some extent, I came here and took away Strobel. He was very weak and suffering from the drug which had frequently been administered to him with his food. I am familiar with such matters, and I had in my room an antidote. By your attempted pursuit of me you had prevented me from going there to get it, so I had to take Strobel with me to Bulfinch Place before restoring him to you. We had a little scene at the lodging-house——" Poubalov paused here and glanced with a smile at Palovna.

"Is it any wonder, Alexander Poubalov?" cried Palovna, flushing; "I regarded you as our enemy, and when I saw you with Strobel helpless in your possession, my worst suspicions were confirmed. I——"

"You could have shot me with a clear conscience! I understand and I understood then. You are a loyal friend, Paul Palovna, and I owe you my life, not on this occasion, perhaps, but at that other time—no matter! The past is past and things are as they are! The short of it is, Miss Hilman, that we satisfied Palovna that matters were not as bad as they looked, and, as you see, he came along with us. We went to Mr. Pembroke's. As you were not there, we came directly here. And that, I think, is the whole story."

Clara was weeping silently, and Ivan stood with his arm around her. There was a moment of silence, and then the party was disturbed by a hubbub in the hall below. It proved to be nothing serious. Mike had been ordered by his employer to return. He, too, had called at Mr. Pembroke's and so found his way to the tavern, and coming upon Patterson he had proceeded to thump him. Poubalov separated the antagonists, and went back to the chamber with the candle. The others stood under the porch, for the front door had been opened by Patterson, until he returned.

"If there is anything more to be said," he remarked, "we'd better go to Mr. Pembroke's."

Poubalov did not remain long with the lovers whom he had reunited. The supreme will of his imperial majesty, he gravely declared, would not permit of his lingering a moment after the accomplishment of his mission. It would give him profound pleasure to report that Mr. Strobel was too firmly attached to America to feel, much less commit hostility to the empire of the czar. And so he took his leave, Clara alone realizing that all well-meant efforts to detain him were calculated to give him needless pain.

Mr. Pembroke recovered rapidly under the relief occasioned by the reappearance of Ivan, for whose absence he felt vaguely accountable. With the death of Dexter the business pressure was so far relieved that he could see his way clear from the trouble, for all he had needed was the time to turn in that the wretched miser would not grant.

But little time was allowed to elapse before the strange interlude in Clara's wedding was brought to an end. A few days after the ceremony Ivan read a brief cable dispatch announcing the arrival of the Cephalonia at Queenstown.

"A steerage passenger," it said, "traveling as Nicolaievitch, but known to be one Litizki, of Boston, jumped from the rail and was drowned shortly after the steamer sighted the Irish coast."

"Poor Litizki!" thought Ivan, "he died for us," and he cut the item out to show to his wife if at some time she should ask whether anything had been heard of the little tailor.

[THE END.]

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