IF Helga was right, I might expect to be stopped very soon, and I was rather surprised that I was allowed even to reach the carriage without interruption.

Had Prince Kalkov taken that prompt step, he might or might not have been able to intercept the papers after finding they were not on me, but certainly things would have gone very differently.

If the Prince did not discover the trick of the dummies until the Embassy messenger had left Petersburg, the chances in my favour would be vastly increased.

To my surprise no attempt at all was made to interfere with me. I presume I was closely watched, but it was done so cleverly that I saw no signs of it. It was not my cue to show any anxiety about it, and I drove from store to store making a few purchases and many inquiries, until the time came for me to return to the hotel to Helga. She was surprised to see me. Over lunch I told her my news, and we discussed the position.

“He feels so sure, Harper, that he has put it off. But it will come before the day is out.”

“The papers are well away by this time,” I laughed, “so he can do his worst.”

“He means to. I have seen M. Boreski. He had heard of my arrest and release, and he came to my house when I was there.”

“I thought he was out of Russia.”“The Duchess Stephanie has patched everything up with her family. So he told me. He is to get back his Polish title, with a pardon for his old conspiracy, and compensation for his lost estates.”

“They must be glad that she is married.”

“I think it is they are rather afraid of what she might do next. It was a strange meeting;” and she smiled. “He is not really a strong man: I mean he likes some one to lean on. He seemed afraid lest the fact of his coming to me should be known, and yet felt bound to come to warn me. He is very conscious of his new dignity.”

“To warn you?”

“Yes, about this journey to Siberia. The Duchess had heard of it and told him—she must be in close consultation with Kalkov after all; probably working hand and glove with him to recover the papers. The intention is that I shall be kept there as a prisoner—if we ever reach there, that is. M. Boreski warned me strongly against going.”

“Did he know anything about your father?”

“No; on that point the Prince appears to have kept absolute secrecy.”

“It all seems to fit in. It will be interesting to see what he does next.”

“I have seen some one else who is most anxious to see you,” said Helga with a bright smile. “A most earnest admirer.”

“To see me?”

“Will be another American citizen, I think, but first wishes to go to Siberia with us.”

“That’s easy to guess, Helga. He is a good fellow. You mean Ivan?”

“Yes,” she nodded. “He used to be devoted to me alone.”

“Did you tell him?”

“About what?” This with an air of supreme innocence.

“That you’re no longer alone, and that his devotion has now to be divided?”“Yes; and actually he wasn’t surprised; but, oh, so ridiculously pleased.”

“Ridiculously?”

She answered with a glance and a smile, and then said—

“I think he is the most faithful servant that ever lived.”

“You’ll find his equal in America.”

“What a wonderful country your America is!” she said.

“You’ll say that in earnest when you’ve been there a while;” and with this mixture of banter and gravity we covered our real anxieties while we waited for Prince Kalkov to come.

He was punctual. The clock was on the stroke of three when he was announced.

“You are to the moment, Prince,” I said.

“I said three o’clock, monsieur.”

“You are not looking well.”

In truth, he was looking very ill. His face was drawn and careworn and absolutely colourless, his eyes tired, and his whole expression suggestive of a strained effort to rally an already overtaxed strength. The events of the previous day had shaken him severely; and I remembered his illness.

“I am an old man, monsieur, and not well. My heart is treacherous,” he said as he sank into a chair.

It was not exactly a happy phrase, and I caught Helga’s fleeting glance of surprise.

“A treacherous heart is an ugly life companion,” I answered gravely. “May I suggest a glass of cognac? You have been overtaxing your strength, Prince,” I said as I handed it to him.

It seemed to give him some energy, and as he put down the glass, he said in a less weary tone—

“You are packing?”

“There is a lot to do, of course. You have brought the papers and so on for our journey?”

“No.”The monosyllable was more like his old sharp abrupt manner.

“No? Oh well, we can wait a day longer if you prefer it,” I answered with a sort of indulgent indifference. “When one is ill, of course, the preparation of such things is troublesome. When may we expect them?”

“I have had news that alters the matter.”

“Indeed. Not bad news for us, I trust.” This with quick anxiety.

“I have heard that Prince Lavalski is dead, monsieur.”

“Dead!” cried Helga, and turned away.

“When did he die?” I asked.

“I do not know.” It was a very lame story, and I think he felt it, although he did his best to make it impressive. “It has greatly disturbed me. I ought to have been informed of it at the time, but it has been left to reach me after long delay through official reports.”

“It is very serious.”

After this from me we were all silent for a time, and Helga went through to the adjoining room.

“It is tragic that you did not know this yesterday, Prince,” I added at length. “To have roused my wife’s hope only to kill it to-day is to inflict a very cruel blow.”

“What will you do now, monsieur?”

“I find it impossible to answer off hand. Of course this proposed journey will now be useless.”

“Quite,” he declared bluntly. “That is why I brought nothing with me.”

I threw up my hands as if the situation baffled me.

“Poor Helga!” I sighed.

“Will you go to your own country, monsieur?” he asked.

“If I can induce my wife to go, yes. But——” I paused.

“You will do most wisely to go.”“No doubt. But——” and I pulled up again as if in the most desperate perplexity.

“You have paused twice on that word, monsieur,” he exclaimed irritably.

“You see this news puts us back to where we were before, and my wife is still resolved to clear her father’s memory. And so am I.”

“You will do most wisely if you go, I repeat.”

“I do not think she will go until that is done. I should not, and I should not counsel her to do so, either.”

“I am not accustomed to speak without full meaning, monsieur, and again I advise you to leave Russia.”

“And if we do not take the advice?”

His answer was a gesture from which I might deduce what I pleased. It was all very subtly and cleverly acted; as cleverly as if the situation had arisen quite unexpectedly.

He had so manoeuvred that the papers were, as he believed, now within his reach. He felt that he could compel us to give them up or have them taken from us, and then deal with us as he pleased. He was probably calculating that I must be discussing the new situation embarrassed by a knowledge of this power of his; and I therefore began to manifest some slight uneasiness.

“I wish to be your friend,” he said at length.

“I am sure of that. You have given me a striking proof—I mean in my marriage. We were scarcely friendly before that,” I added with a forced and somewhat nervous laugh. “But I feel rather embarrassed.”

“It is a wife’s duty to obey her husband.”

“Naturally; but this marriage of ours was for a special purpose, you see; and we were agreed upon it.”

“If you care for your wife’s safety, to say nothing of your own, you will take my advice, monsieur, and leave the country with her.”

“It is all so unexpected.” I spoke in the manner of one taken unawares. “I will take a day to consider what to do.”

“No, you must decide now,” he replied firmly; thinking no doubt, as I intended he should, that I wished to use the interval to get rid of the papers.

“In a matter of such importance one must have time,” I protested with a spice of indignation. “It is only reasonable.” I was growing manifestly more and more uneasy, and he perceived it. “It means so much.”

“It means—everything to you both, so far as your future is concerned.”

“I must have time,” I repeated, and began to pace the room.

“I can grant none.”

“But it does not rest with you to either grant or refuse it,” I retorted, as if now attempting to put a bolder face on things.

“As to that, we shall see.”

He was very confident; his voice and manner showed that; and I am sure that he enjoyed my apparent embarrassment. His sharp eyes followed me as I strode up and down the room.

“Come back this evening, and you shall have our decision.”

“I must know at once.”

“It is unreasonable, unjust, impossible,” I cried with growing anger. “I will not stand your dictation in such a matter. I can’t decide now, and I won’t!”

“I shall not leave the room without your decision.”

“Then I will;” and I walked to the door.“You cannot leave, monsieur.”

I turned on him in time to catch a look of extreme exultation in his eyes. He guessed I had the papers on me and wished to get away with them. I promptly rubbed it in by saying very angrily—

“You shall not insult me, monsieur. If you wish to make my wife a prisoner, you can do so; she will remain; but you have no right to detain me. It is monstrous.”

“You cannot leave the room, M. Denver; my men are outside.”

I was now in great fear; the start I gave showed him this.

“Do you dare to make me, an American citizen, a prisoner in my own rooms? You shall answer for this, monsieur,” I exclaimed with great heat, and flung the door open.

He had spoken truly. A half-dozen men were stationed at the doors of our rooms. I shut the door again angrily.

“I shall appeal to my Ambassador.”

“Have you not carried this far enough?” he asked menacingly. I had come to the same conclusion—although our reasons differed no doubt. “You have no alternative now but to accept my conditions,” he added.

I affected to think, and then called Helga.

“Helga, Prince Kalkov orders us to leave Russia, and because I will not consent immediately, and will not advise you to take no further steps to clear your father’s memory, he threatens to have us arrested.”

“It is like his Highness,” she said contemptuously.

“What answer shall we give him?”

“Let him do as he will.”

“M. Denver has not quite explained my position. It is that you are free to leave Russia and go to the United States, if you hand to me the papers of which you obtained possession.”

“I do not make conditions with you, Prince Kalkov,” answered Helga with splendid scorn.

“You are right, madame. It is I who make them, you who obey them,” he cried, rising, his voice trembling with anger under the lash of her words and look. “I will have no more of this; my patience is exhausted. Will you give them up, monsieur, and go?”

He was not pretty in his anger, but I ventured on one more little tonic for it. I burst into a laugh.“Oh, the papers you want? Why didn’t you say so? I haven’t them; so I can’t give them to you.”

“It is false, monsieur, it is false. You are lying!” he exclaimed in a flame of passion, his eyes blazing. Then his rage seemed to burst out like a long smouldering volcano, which, breaking at length through the thin restraining crust, pours out its flood of white hot lava. “I know the truth. I have heard from your Embassy. They were given to you to-day. I know where you have been since. I have watched you here, and I know they are upon your person now.” I started back and, as if involuntarily, put my hand to my breast pocket. He smiled cunningly. “Yes, I understand that gesture. Come, monsieur, I have outplayed you; give them me, and even now you can go.”

“With your treacherous heart, Prince, you should guard against such passion as this.”

“Silence, monsieur,” he said, half beside himself with anger. “Give them to me, give them to me!” and he came toward me, his hand outstretched and trembling violently. He looked the very incarnation of triumphant and unbridled fury.

“I have told your Highness I have not them,” I said, drawing back.

I might as well have spoken to a whirlwind.

He answered me with a wild storm of invective, cursing me for a liar and a villain and a hundred other things, and ending with threats as unrestrained as his anathemas.

“Give them up and go. Go where you will, and take your wife with you. We have no room even in our gaols for either American scum like you or Nihilist devils like her! Give them to me, I say. I have waited and schemed for this triumph; and do you think I will let you rob me of it? Give them me, give them me.”

His manner was so threatening that I half thought he would throw himself on me and attempt to drag the papers from me.“You are not yourself. You had better call your men,” I said.

Helga, pale and shrinking before his outbreak, drew behind me.

“By God! You dare to lie to me still!” he exclaimed, and hurrying to the door, brought in a couple of men. “Now, I give you a last chance. Will you give them me?”

“I have told you I have nothing to give you.”

The apparent obstinacy added fuel to his ungovernable rage.

“Search the dog,” he said savagely between his set teeth; “and if he resists, use force.”

He watched me as the men approached, his eyes scintillating with anger and his hands clenching and unclenching with spasmodic tension.

“I shall not resist; I only protest, monsieur,” I said.

“Search the dog!” he exclaimed again, his voice choked with passion.

I made no resistance, of course; I had nothing to gain by doing so; and when the men took from my breast pocket the large envelope the Prince’s face lighted with triumph, and rushing at the man who held it, he tore it from his grasp, and then fell back with it into a chair as if exhausted with the effort.

He gave one glance at the writing on the envelope and looked up at me.

“Liar! I knew it.” The growl of a beast gloating over its prey secured after infinite labour—but secured.

While he was enjoying this moment of supposed triumph over us, the men who had searched me stood hesitating and waiting for further orders.

It was some moments before he could rally his reserved strength and master his rage sufficiently to speak to us again.

“Even now I can be merciful. Will you go to America?” He looked at us both and tapped one of the packets.“No,” I answered firmly.

“Choose, you”—and he pointed a trembling hand at Helga—“between the mines and abandoning this.”

“I will go to the mines—if you can send me there,” she answered without a shade of hesitation. Her quickness seemed to rekindle his rage.

“This man and woman are under arrest,” he said to the men by me. “Remain outside the door.” As they went out, he sat glaring at us and fingering the packets.

“What next?” I asked.

“You shall answer for your crime, and may thank your God I do not send you with your wife to the mines at once.”

“I don’t thank God; I thank my wife’s and my precautions.”

“You dared to pit yourself against me; and can see the result. Failure!” He all but hissed the word at us as he shook the packet in triumph.

“What you hold there is the proof of your failure, not mine. You had better open it.”

He had been so certain that for the moment he only laughed; but on meeting my look, doubt and anxiety began to steal over his face.

“The papers you seek are across the frontier; you have nothing there but blank sheets.”

“It is a lie, another damnable lie! I was at the Embassy to-day.”

“You forget; I was there and saw Mr. Marvyn—last night.”

“My God!”

His whole soul seemed to speak in that one cry of dismay; and for a moment he looked at the packet like a dazed man, afraid to open it and learn the truth. Then with shaking frenzied fingers he tore at the seals.

Helga clung to my arm.

The paper was tough and resisted his efforts for a time, thus accentuating his excitement and suspense.

At last he opened it and stared at the blank sheets.Then he turned on me such a look of baffled rage as I had never seen on a man’s face before.

He strove to speak, and failed; and the sheets fluttered down to the ground from his nerveless fingers.

Then he sprang up and staggered toward me, stopped suddenly, uttered a loud inarticulate cry, and pressing his hand to his heart, fell prone almost at my feet.

“He is ill,” said Helga, speaking for the first time, and bending over him.

“Probably dying,” I murmured; and seeing the crisis, I went to the door and called his men.

“The Prince is very ill; you had better let some one go for a doctor.”