Chapter Thirty Four. The Emperor’s Command.

Again the Emperor turned to his table and scribbled a few lines in Russian, which he handed to the man.

It was an impressive moment. What he had written was the dismissal in disgrace of his favourite, the most powerful official in the Empire.

“I shall receive him in audience to-night, and shall give this to him,” he said. “The punishment I can afterwards consider.”

Then, after a pause, he added:

“I have to thank you, Danilo Danilovitch, for all that you have revealed to me. Go and tell your comrades of the Revolution all that I have said and what I have done. Tell them that their Emperor will himself see that justice is accorded them—that his one object in future shall be to secure, by God’s grace, the peace, prosperity and tranquillity of the Russian nation.”

Then the Emperor bowed as sign that the audience was at an end, and the man, unused to the etiquette of Court, bowed, turned, and wishing us farewell, walked out.

“All this utterly astounds me, Trewinnard,” said His Majesty, when Danilovitch had gone. He was speaking as a man, not as an Emperor. “Yet what Tattie has revealed only confirms what I suspected regarding the death of my poor brother Peter,” he went on. “You recollect that I told you my suspicions—of my secret—on the day of the fourth Court ball last year. It is now quite plain. He was ruthlessly killed by the one man in my entourage whom I have so foolishly believed to be my friend. Ah! How grossly one may be deceived—even though he be an Emperor!” and he sighed, drawing his strong hand wearily across his brow.

After a pause he added: “I have to thank you, Trewinnard, for thus tearing the scales from my eyes. Indeed, I have to thank you for much in connection with what I have learned to-day.”

“No, Sire,” was my reply. “Rather thank Her Imperial Highness. To her efforts all is due. She has sacrificed her great love for a most worthy man in the performance of this, her duty. Had she not resolved to return to Russia and speak openly at risk of giving you offence, she might have remained in England—or, rather, in Scotland, still preserving her incognita, and still retaining at her side the honest, upright young Englishman with whom she has been in love ever since her school-days at Eastbourne.”

“I quite realise the great sacrifice you have made, Tattie,” said the Emperor, turning to her kindly, and noting how pale was her beautiful countenance and how intense her look. “By this step you have, in all probability, saved my life. Markoff and his gang of corrupt Ministers would have no doubt killed me whenever it suited their purpose to do so. But you have placed your duty to myself and to the nation before your love, therefore some adequate recompense is certainly due to you.”

The great man of commanding presence strode across the room from end to end, his bearded chin upon his breast, deep in thought. Suddenly he halted before her, and drawing himself up with that regal air which suited him so well, he looked straight at her, placed his hand tenderly upon her shoulder as she sat, and said:

“Tell me, Tattie; do you really and truly love this Englishman?”

“I do, uncle,” the girl faltered, her fine eyes downcast. “Of course I do. I—I cannot tell you a lie and deny it.”

“And—well, if Richard Drury took out letters of naturalisation as a Russian subject, and I made him a Count—and I gave you permission to marry—what then—eh?” he asked, smiling merrily as he stood over her.

She sprang to her feet and grasped both his big hands.

“You will!” she cried. “You really will! Uncle, tell me!”

The Emperor, smiling benignly upon her—for, after all, she was his favourite niece—slowly nodded in the affirmative.

Whereupon she turned to me, exclaiming:

“Oh! Uncle Colin. Dear old Uncle Colin! I’m so happy—so very happy! I must telegraph to Dick at once—at once!”

“No, no, little madcap,” interrupted the Emperor; “not from here. The Secret Police would quickly know all about it. Send someone to the German frontier with a telegram. One of our couriers shall start to-night. Drury will receive the good news to-morrow evening, and, Tattie,”—he added, taking both her little hands again, “I have known all along, from various reports, how deeply and devotedly you love this young Englishman. Therefore, if I give my consent and make your union possible, I only hope and trust that you will both enjoy every happiness.”

In her wild ecstasy of delight the girl raised her sweet face to his heavy-bearded countenance, that face worn by the cares of State, and kissed him fervently, thanking him profoundly, while I on my part craved for the immediate release of poor Luba de Rosen.

The Emperor at once scribbled something upon an official telegraph form, and touching a bell, the sentry carried it out.

“The young lady so cruelly wronged will be free and on her way back to Petersburg within three hours,” the Monarch said quietly, after the sentry had made his exit.

“Oh! Uncle Colin!” cried Her Highness excitedly to me, “what a red-letter day this is for me!”

“And for me also, Tattie,” remarked His Majesty in his deep, clear voice. “Owing to your efforts, I have learned some amazing but bitter truths; I have at last seen the reason why my people have so cruelly misjudged me, and why they hate me. I realise how I have, alas! been blinded and misled by a corrupt and unscrupulous Ministry who have exercised their power for their own self-advancement, their methods being the stirring-up of the people, the creation of dissatisfaction, unrest, and the actual manufacture of revolutionary plots directed against my own person. I now know the truth, and I intend to act—to act with a hand as strong and as relentless as they have used against my poor, innocent, long-suffering subjects.” Her Highness was all anxiety to send a telegram by courier over the frontier to Eydtkuhnen. If he left Petersburg by the night train at a quarter-past ten, he would, she reckoned, be at the frontier at six o’clock on the following evening. It was half an hour by train from Tzarskoie-Selo to Petersburg, and she was now eager to end the audience and be dismissed.

But His Majesty seemed in no hurry. He asked us both many questions concerning Markoff, and what we knew regarding his dealings with the bomb-throwers.

Natalia explained what had occurred in Brighton, and how she had been constantly watched by Danilovitch, while I described the visit of Hartwig and myself to that dingy house in Lower Clapton. That sinister, unscrupulous chief of Secret Police had been directly responsible for the death of Natalia’s father; and Her Highness was bitter in her invectives against him.

“Leave him to me,” said the Emperor, frowning darkly. “He is an assassin, and he shall be punished as such.”

Then, ringing his bell again, he ordered the next Imperial courier in waiting to be summoned, for at whatever palace His Majesty might be there were always half a dozen couriers ready at a moment’s notice to go to the furthermost end of the Empire.

“I know, Tattie, you are anxious to send your message. Write it at my table, and it shall be sent from the first German station. Here, in Russia, the Secret Police are furnished with copies of all messages sent abroad or received. We do not want your secret disclosed just yet!” he laughed.

So the girl seated herself in the Emperor’s chair, and after one or two attempts composed a telegram containing the good news, which she addressed to Richard Drury at his flat in Albemarle Street.

Presently the courier, a big, bearded man of gigantic stature, in drab uniform, was ushered into the Imperial presence, and saluted. To him, His Majesty gave the message, and ordered him to take it by the next train to Eydtkuhnen. Whereupon the man again saluted, backed out of the door, and started upon his errand. What, I wondered, would Dick Drury think when he received her reassuring message?

Natalia’s face beamed with supreme happiness, while the Emperor himself for the moment forgot his enemies in the pleasure which his niece’s delight gave to him.

Again His Majesty, with darkening brow, referred to the brutal murder of his favourite brother, the Grand Duke Peter, saying:

“You will recollect, Trewinnard, the curious conviction which one day so suddenly came upon me. I revealed it to you in strictest secrecy—the ghastly truth which seemed to have been forced upon me by some invisible agency. It was my secret, and the idea has haunted me ever since. And yet here to-day my suspicion that poor Peter was killed by some person who feared what secret he might reveal stands confirmed; and yet,” he cried, “how many times have I, in my ignorance, taken the hand of my brother’s murderer!”

Colonel Polivanoff, the Imperial Marshal; my old friend, Captain Stoyanovitch, equerry-in-waiting, both craved audience, one after the other, for they bore messages for His Majesty. Therefore they were received without ceremony and impatiently dismissed. The subject the Sovereign was discussing with us was of far more importance than reports from the great military camps at Yilna and at Smolensk, where manoeuvres were taking place.

The Emperor turned to his private telephone and was speaking with Trepoff, the Minister for Foreign Affairs in Petersburg, when the Marshal Polivanoff again entered, saying:

“His Excellency General Markoff petitions audience of Your Majesty.”

Natalia and I exchanged quick glances, and both of us rose.

For a second the Emperor hesitated. Then, turning to us, he commanded us to remain.

“I will see him at once,” he said very calmly, his face a trifle paler.

Next moment the man whose dismissal in disgrace was already lying upon the Emperor’s desk stood upon the threshold and bowed himself into the Imperial presence.