CHAPTER XVII

Corsini, pale and exhausted from his terrible experiences, sat in Golitzine’s study. General Beilski was there also.

“Now, Signor, we want to get at the bottom of this.” It was the Count who was speaking. Beilski was a devoted adherent of the Czar, and had been promoted to his high post through the Imperial favour, but he was not a man of very considerable mentality, and the astute secretary had, privately, a very poor opinion of him.

Corsini struggled to collect his wandering thoughts.

“It seems all like a very bad and confused dream, your Excellency. I remember playing at the Zouroff Palace. I had a short conversation with the Princess Nada. I left early; the Prince accompanied me to the door. I remember distinctly the hall-porter and an obscure sort of person lounging in the doorway. I left and walked along in the direction of my hotel. Suddenly I was surrounded by four men—footpads, as I surmised. They seized me and drugged me. The rest is a blank. I woke up in a little bedroom in an obscure inn, with a kind doctor bending over me. Then, there are sleeping and waking intervals, and I find myself here in your Excellency’s house.”

“Can you carry your mind a little farther back, Signor Corsini? You recognise that you were kidnapped by some persons who desired your disappearance.”

“I understand that perfectly, Count. Let me go back a little. There are certain suspicious circumstances that recur to me.”

Beilski and the Count exchanged significant glances. Golitzine motioned the young man to proceed.

“I was engaged to play at the Zouroff Palace last night. I had already acquainted your Excellency with that fact.”

The Count nodded a little impatiently. He was anxious to get at the facts.

“A very singular thought has occurred to me, gentlemen. Madame Quéro was very insistent that I should not play at the Zouroff Palace. On two occasions she endeavoured strongly to dissuade me, to make me break my appointment.”

The other two men exchanged an even more significant glance. They were getting close to the truth.

Nello had paused. He seemed desirous to say more, but something kept him back. Golitzine noticed his hesitation.

“Come, Signor Corsini, out with it. You have not yet told us all you surmise or suspect. We know about La Belle Quéro. There is something else you can tell us if you choose.”

Corsini was never a very good dissembler. He was as wax in the hands of these experienced men of the world.

“A singular thing, gentlemen, after thinking over all those things, is this. Perhaps you know that it is a peculiarity of mine to always walk to and from my engagements.”

“It is a peculiarity of yours that has been already commented on,” said Golitzine, who knew everything about everybody. “Proceed, Signor.”

“It is just a thing that has struck me as a little peculiar, taken in conjunction with the whole circumstances. Madame Quéro, whom I know you suspect, was very insistent that I should not go to the Zouroff Palace, without assigning any definite or plausible reason.”

“We have already understood that,” interrupted Beilski, rubbing his hands. “Perhaps we may now come to something that throws more light on the affair.”

Corsini proceeded. “I had a brief conversation with the Princess Nada.” He blushed slightly as he continued. “She was pleased to express some solicitude for my welfare, my health. She thought I was not looking well, that I had been working too hard. She asked if I had a carriage waiting for me. I answered in the negative, telling her that I always preferred to walk home. She offered to procure a conveyance for me, and added that it could be drawn up at a private entrance to the Palace, as there was a great crush in the main entrance. Gentlemen, I have told you all the facts, it is for you to draw your inferences. It is pretty evident that both Madame Quéro and the Princess had an inkling, perhaps actual knowledge, of the danger that was threatening me, and dared not say more than they did.”

Golitzine rose and drew the General into a corner.

“The thing is clear enough. The two women have been in league to save this young man. La Quéro has split upon Zouroff, because she is in love with Corsini, and has enlisted the sympathies of the Princess, probably in love with Corsini herself. You see it, General?”

Beilski had not the agile intelligence of the Count, but when it was so clearly put before him, he saw it.

“The young woman who brought the note is the maid of one of them,” he said tersely. “Well, my men shall bring both the maids before me to-morrow and I will wring the truth out of one of them. In the meantime, how shall we proceed with Corsini?”

“Take him back to his hotel. Fudge any story you like to the manager—been taken ill in my house, or yours, it does not matter which. Let him go about his usual duties and let him be safely guarded till we bring this home to the proper quarters. How about those men accompanying the carriage?”

“Alas! I have only bagged a couple,” answered the General regretfully. “The others escaped through the want of vigilance on the part of my men.”

“And what have the two you captured got to say for themselves?”

“Just nothing. Their lips are sealed. They will take their own punishment, but they will not give away their employer. If we had lived in the old days we could have made them speak.”

Golitzine crossed over to the young Italian.

“Signor Corsini, I cannot say how deeply I am grieved that you should have been subjected to this outrage. Rest assured it shall be tracked home to the proper quarters, and you shall be amply avenged. I have asked General Beilski to put a secure guard around you whenever you venture abroad. You need fear no repetition. Salmoros would never forgive me if you came to harm.”

Corsini was taken back to his hotel, wondering over all the things that had happened to him. A tale was fudged up to the manager that he had been attacked with sudden indisposition at the house of Count Golitzine, and compelled to remain there. Beilski took good care that he was unobtrusively guarded by members of the secret police.

The next thing was to get hold of the two maids. The General’s satellites secured the one in the service of Madame Quéro, and brought her along.

Beilski interrogated her himself, but the cross-examination of five minutes convinced him that she was not the woman who had brought the note. And the porter was equally certain on this point. She was a person of different build.

He dismissed her with a caution, as he handed her some coins.

“I would prefer that you kept your mouth shut about this visit. Still, it is very probable you will blab about it to your mistress.”

“Not after your generosity, your Excellency,” answered the maid gratefully, with a smirk.

The General grunted. “That is as it may be. I don’t know that I trust you farther than that door. But if you should feel disposed to take your mistress into your confidence, you can tell her this—that we have our eye upon her and know more than she thinks.”

Half an hour later the terrified Katerina was brought into his presence. She had been taken in charge a few yards outside the Zouroff Palace, whence she was proceeding on a shopping errand for her young mistress.

The General, with his experienced eye, read at once in her demeanour the signs of great perturbation. She was no hardened criminal, only a weak, trembling girl. He had rough and ready methods for such as these.

“Speak the truth, girl, and fear not; the strong arm of the law shall protect you,” he thundered in his loud, vigorous accents. “You are the young woman who brought me a note the other day from the Princess Nada. My hall-porter has recognised you.”

This, of course, was a flight of the gallant General’s imagination. The hall-porter had distinctly said that he would not be certain of recognising her; but it was enough to scare the shrinking Katerina.

She sank upon her knees, trembling in every limb. “It is true, your Excellency. Are you going to kill me, or send me to Siberia?”

The General smiled grimly. “Neither, my excellent young woman, as you have confessed without any unnecessary trouble. Give my compliments to your young mistress, and tell her I will give myself the pleasure of waiting upon her this afternoon on a little private matter. You can tell her that I have interrogated you, and you have confessed. You can also mention that the police, presided over by General Beilski, has a long arm, and a very wide espionage; also that we find out things pretty quickly, however carefully they are concealed.”

Poor Katerina hurried away, her brain in a whirl. As she scurried home, she reproached herself that, under the awe-inspiring presence of the formidable General, she had given her young mistress away. But, after all, she was not to blame. The Princess ought not to have sent her on such an errand.

Nada had been wondering at her absence. The shopping errand on which she had been despatched should not have occupied her very long.

Poor Katerina had to confess to her interview with the General. Nada spoke no word of blame; it was her own fault that she had chosen so weak an instrument. And she further admitted to herself that if Beilski’s emissaries had seized her instead of her maid and conveyed her to his headquarters, she would have lost her head as her maid had done.

And the General was coming to-day to worm out of her all he could. Of course, she knew she would be as wax in his hands. But even above her own immediate troubles rose the one anxious thought—was Corsini safe? had he escaped the vengeance of her ruthless brother?

She could not make use of the already too terrified Katerina any more. She sent around a brief note to Corsini at his hotel, in which she asked him to procure for her a certain piece of music of which he had spoken to her in a brief conversation a little time ago.

The messenger came back with the information that Signor Corsini was engaged in his duties at the Opera, and that the note would be given him on his return.

This relieved her very much. Corsini, at any rate, was safe. Her strategies had succeeded. She braced her nerves for the forthcoming interview with the General. She knew it would be a strenuous one. How, in the name of all that was marvellous, had he discovered that she was the sender of that letter?

Beilski had chosen a most fortunate day from her point of view. Her mother was in bed with a feverish cold. She would have to receive the General alone. He would go to the point at once. If she had her mother’s protecting presence, decency, respect for his old friend of many years, would have tied his tongue to some extent. He might hint his suspicions of Zouroff to a sister; he would conceal them from a mother, ruffian as he knew the son to be.

But though her heart was fluttering, she received him very prettily and graciously. Had she not known him from a child?

“An unexpected pleasure, my dear General. It is not often that you come to the Zouroff Palace.”

“Not so often as I would wish, my dear child, but my time is very fully occupied. As you can guess, these are troublous times. How is your dear mother?”

Nada explained that the Princess was in bed with the first symptoms of a feverish cold.

The General took a few sips of the cup of tea that the charming young Princess offered him. His bushy eyebrows worked from time to time. He was a perfect gentleman at heart; he was also very chivalrous to women. He did not at all relish the mission he was engaged on. It was the breaking of a butterfly upon a wheel, and the butterfly was the little girl to whom he used to bring chocolates and bon-bons a few years ago.

“Sorry to hear it, my dear child. Keep her warm and she will soon be all right.” Of course he was not really sorry at all that the Princess Zouroff was well out of the way; it was now all plain sailing.

After a long pause, he spoke in gruff accents. “There is no need to fence, Nada. You got the message from your maid. You know why I have come and what I have come for.”

“Yes, I know,” answered the young Princess in a faltering voice.

The General drew his chair closer. “Now, out with it all. From whom did you get the information that prompted you to write that letter?”