McClure's Magazine/Volume 50/Number 8/The Spider of Warsaw

by Arthur Train

 

Here is a thrilling novel
complete in this number,
—such a story as could
come only out of Russia

 

Illustration: “Open the doors for His Royal Highness!” she cried

 

The
Spider of Warsaw

By Arthur Train

Illustrations by James Montgomery Flagg

“AND then,” complacently remarked M. Tarnowski, commonly referred to as “The Spider of Warsaw,” “it would be only natural for His Imperial Majesty to appoint me Civil Governor of Warsaw or even Governor General of Poland, would it not?”

The woman opposite him at the table lowered her heavy lids and contemplatively blew a breath of cigarette smoke from her small and much too red lips. She was dark, languid in her movements, rather heavily built except for her neck and arms, and although thirty-seven years of age, might easily have passed—and in fact sometimes did—for twenty-five.

“I always knew you had brains, Ivan,” she answered in a half-bantering tone. “Now I begin to suspect that you have genius.”

Her companion, a stocky man with a bull neck and closely cropped round skull, lifted her hand to his lips.

“Together we might go far!“ he murmured.

Lily Czvorska, Countess of the Holy Roman Empire, suffered his caress in spite of her loathing for him.

“Not too far, I hope!” she protested, with a faint smile, for it was a situation difficult to duplicate even in the annals of the Wilhelmstrasse, of which she was for twenty years had been—a trusted agent. “Not too—far!”

Tarnowski flushed under his bristly little side-whiskers.

“I suppose you refer to Siberia,” he growled. “I wish you would restrain your sense of humor. Really, you sometimes make me shiver.”

“So might Siberia, I fancy,” she laughed. Then her face became grave. “Don't you think you are playing rather a dangerous game? You, the Chief of Police of Warsaw, cannot afford to take chances. What would become of you—if anything went wrong?—And of me?” she added.

Tarnowski pressed her hand and returned it to its former place by the samovar. He was a fool only about himself and—like a certain strong man of Holy Writ—about women. And he was very much taken with the Countess Czvorska; and as much as his cold-blooded, calculating nature would permit, he was in love with her. Had he only known it she would have promised him anything at that moment, even marriage, for promises were a part of her stock in trade.

“But think of the stakes!” he replied eagerly.

She got up and went to the window of her apartment, where they were having afternoon tea together.

It was November, 1914, and the beautiful avenue of the Krakowskie Przedmiescie was covered with a light fall of powdered snow in which the military motors whirring past left long graceful tracks. The victorious Russians had driven the retreating Germans forty miles westward and the two armies were now facing each other near Lowiez, hesitating for a brief moment before plunging into a decisive combat. Up to that very afternoon she had focussed al! her ingenuity upon the problem of how to seduce Tarnowski into becoming her accomplice in an attempt to turn Warsaw over to the Germans. But now—! It was incredible! Almost comic! He was playing into her hands in a way she could never have foreseen and would never have had the temerity to hope for,—was about to embark upon an elaborate plan to elevate himself in the eves of his imperial master—who, naturally, had never heard of his existence—which would, with a slight disarrangement from her practised hand,—result in his imperial master being blown to atoms, a consummation from her point of view even more desirable than the capitulation of Warsaw. The city could be recaptured, but the assassination of the Czar would leave Russia, already in a politically muddled condition, more muddled than ever.

From her window across Sigismund Square she could see the Radziwill Palace, the official residence of the Governor-General. That was where this pursy little man was planning to live some day soon,—with her!

“A crazy game!” she repeated, without turning. A regiment of the Lithuanian Legion was marching by, preceded by a band playing the national anthem, and she watched them with apparent idleness, her mind filled with rapidly interchanging thoughts.

Tarnowski grunted impatiently.

“It is childishly simple! You know that I have my men everywhere,—that nothing goes on without my knowledge. I have agents provocateurs in every nihilist group in Warsaw.”

“BUT suppose one of these agents should betray you?” she demanded. “You know what it would he, eh?” She nodded toward the Prefecture. “A corner of the courtyard over there at three in the morning, a firing squad, and a new chief of police of Warsaw.”

“You don't seem to understand!” he replied with some irritation. “Nobody could ever connect me with it. I shall do it all through Tongeroff. I shall see nobody but him, speak to nobody but him, give orders to nobody but him. I shall send for him to-night. He will come to my office by the tunnel from the Vistula under the wharf beside the Alexandrovsk Bridge. You remember it, no doubt. You row under the piles of the wharf to a door and——”

“I know,” she interjected. “So that nobody will even know that you have seen him!”

“Exactly. Well, I shall say to him, 'Tongeroff, I have a job for you. Success will make fame and fortune for both of us. But the slightest mistake—the slightest treachery and the little Tongeroffs will have to find another papa'!”

He smiled grimly for he enjoyed his own feeble wit and got intense satisfaction out of his schemes and the contemplation of his own negligible part in them.

The Countess Czvorska returned from the window and seated herself in an armchair in front of the fire. There was a decanter of brandy on a tabaret beside the chair and she poured out two glasses of it and beckoned te Tarnowski to join her.

“Tell me over again exactly what your plan is.”

“Then you are beginning to see its possibilities?” he asked.

She nodded.

“I perceive its boldness.” she answered, as if in admiration of his courage.

Tarnowski's pulse leaped to her flattery.

“Well, as you are aware, His Imperial Majesty intends to visit Warsaw a week from to-day to celebrate the victories of his armies by a mass in the Cathedral and to meet the public officers of the city. They say it is a preliminary to granting autonomy to Poland, but I don't believe it. Well, the arrangements are in my hands—all of them. Accompanied by his staff he will arrive in a special train at ten o'clock and will proceed by automobile down the Krakowskie Przedmiescie to Sigismund Square and the Cathedral. It will be a great occasion! I shall say to Tongeroff, 'I purpose to save the Czar's life. But in order to do that I shall have to save him from something, and that something you must supply. But lest your inventive faculties should prove insufficient I will furnish the brains in the affair. You must find some anarchist—some 'Red'—willing to attempt to assassinate His Imperial Majesty with a bomb on his way to the Cathedral. Under my directions you will arrange for the time and place from which he will throw it. That is, he will think he is going to throw it, but in reality I shall frustrate the attempt in the very nick of time.”

“Bravo!” exclaimed Lily. “If you ever found life dull in Warsaw you could make a fortune writing for the cinemas!”

“If we are going to have a plot we might as well have a good one,” agreed the Chief of Police, not fully knowing whether or not a compliment was intended. “My idea is to have Tongeroff hire a room in a house about a hundred yards down the Avenue from here, from which to throw the bomb.”

“From which the assassin will think that he is going to throw it,” corrected the Countess.

“Precisely acquiesced Tarnowski. “There will have to be a real bomb because otherwise those in the plot might discover that they were being duped. Tongeroff will supply that. There will also be a catapult to hurl the bomb. The plan will be as follows: On the night before the procession the person selected to take the Czar's life will go to the room, where everything will previously have been prepared. There he will wait until the following morning. He will be told to discharge the catapult at the precise moment that the motor carrying the Czar arrives in front of your door. But meantime I shall have discovered the plot and—in the very presence of His Imperial Majesty—shall rush into the house and arrest the would-be murderer just as he is on the point of taking our Sovereign's life!”

“That will require considerable bravery!” she exclaimed.

“Oh, I am not deficient in that!” replied Tarnowski, modestly.

The Countess controlled herself with difficulty. She would have liked to twist his pudgy little nose.

“But what will become of your victim?” she asked. “This lamb who is to be sacrificed upon the altar of your ambition?”

Tarnowski expelled a cloud of cigarette smoke with an air of indifference.

“Lamb?” he returned curtly. “Ravening wolf, you mean! Who knows and who cares?”

“But, of course, he will expect to have some means of escape provided for him, once he has performed his part in the drama.”

“Naturally,” answered the Chief. “He will be assured of every possible requirement,—a ladder over the adjacent housetops, a place to change his costume to the uniform of an officer of the Imperial Guards, and a military automobile to whisk him out of Warsaw!”

“Poor man!”” murmured the Countess. Not that she felt the slightest compunction in the matter, but the better to preserve her rôle of sympathetic femininity.

“And now,” continued her dupe, “I must go to set the machinery working. A week is barely enough to elaborate our plan.” And again he raised her hand to his lips.

Lily Czvorska gave him a look of well-simulated admiration.

“Very good!” assented the Chief of Police. “On Thursday evening,—at nine o'clock shall we say? But, of course, I shall see you before then, and report progress.

He arose ponderously as she pressed the bell.

“Au revoir, then!” he said, and bowed himself out.

The Countess Czvorska threw herself back among the lace cushions of her armchair with an expression of satisfaction, in which were mingled amusement and contempt. For fifteen years she had played the part of a great lady of fashion in Warsaw without the remotest suspicion being entertained by anybody of her identity, character or occupation. Yet, in spite of the large sums which she received to defray her expenses, the prominent social position which she occupied, and the apparent gaiety of her life, she was mortally weary of it. The whole thing was so prosaically impersonal. She herself was but a number among several thousand other numbers—“607.” The men and women who slipped over her threshold after midnight or met her in quiet little out-of-the-way shops down by the Zelazna Brama—were only numbers. Who they really were, she rarely, if ever, knew. Even the identity of her correspondents in Berlin, London, Petrograd and Moscow was unknown to her. And she had to be so careful! Never a moment when she could let herself be herself. Yet she must go on with it! Never, except for a purpose, dictated by a person in Berlin—with a number could she love or be loved! She had no choice now but to go on, for once having elected to become an agent of the Wilhelmstrasse she could never cease to be one until success of an unusual sort—or death—released her from its service. Sometimes she envied the shop-girls as they hurried away from their work, their laughter ringing across the sidewalks to where she sat half-buried in furs in her motor. They at least were free! She was never free—forever chained to a secret,—than which there is no greater slavery.

The gray light died out of the sky over the Citadel and the Cathedral of the Holy Cross. The sunset gun boomed from the Mokotowski Barracks and the flag on the Radziwill Palace shivered down to earth. The gathering darkness filled her with depression. She hated the twilight hours although ber whole life was in twilight. At such times, her past loomed black against the horizon of her comparatively short career. There were things in it that she did not like to remember. So when the first lamps broke out in the Nowy Swiat she was accustomed to order the shades drawn and the lights turned on. But to-night it was not the past but the future that menaced her. Now that Tarnowski was gone, the horror of what she purposed to do took shape. True, it would not be by her hand that the Czar would meet his death, yet view it from whatever angle she might it was nothing less than murder. She had only to drug Tarnowski on the night before the Czar's arrival in Warsaw and the plot would take care of itself, Everything would be done by others, without the possibility of her being implicated, even if Tarnowski himself should confess everything! The tiny bottle containing the brown powder that made men sleep was hidden almost at her elbow. It was extraordinary! Fanciful!

There was a deferential knock upon the door and in response to her direction her footman, Paul, entered.

“A young woman from the dressmaker's, madam.”

“Let her come in.”

A pale, slender girl of about eighteen came forward hesitatingly, carrying an oblong box, while Paul turned on the lights.

“Good evening, my dear!” said Lily, kindly.

“Good evening, madam!” answered the girl, making a courtesy. “Your ladyship's dress is finished. Will you try it on?”

Under the soft lamplight she looked even younger.

Lily Czvorska envied her her masses of yellow hair beneath which her big blue eyes looked out like cornflowers in a field of wheat. She was very pretty, a great deal too pretty to be a seamstress.

“Yes, I'll try it on,” answered Lily. “What is your name, my dear?”

“Sophie Yaska, my lady,” replied the girl, as the footman reluctantly closed the door.

“Are you a Pole?”

“Yes, my lady.”

She deftly untied the strings that bound the box.

“Where do you live?” continued Lily. Not to ask questions was for her an impossibility.

“In Tiraspol. It is a suburb of New Praga, just across the Alexandrovsk Bridge. Rents are much cheaper there. I can get a room for two roubles. Here in Warsaw the same room would cost me three.”

“Dear me!” exclaimed Lily, “what a saving! And is life in Tiraspol exciting?”

“Not very,” answered the girl. “The lives of the poor are almost always dull. Mine is like all of them. I have only one half-holiday a month. Sometimes I go to a concert.”

“But have you no lovers?” inquired the Countess, removing her bodice.

Sophie turned away, and a dark red spread itself over her neck and cheeks. Yet politeness demanded that she should answer the lady.

“Yes, madam.”

“And yet life is dull, eh? That is too bad.” Lily leaned over and pinched the girl's ear. “Take my advice and don't get married!” she admonished. There was something about Sophie's anaemic beauty that attracted and pleased her. It would be a shame to think of her hanging over a stove in a squalid kitchen in New Praga with a couple of squalling brats quarreling on the floor. Better, she thought, only the one half-holiday a month. There were degrees in dulness, after all!

II

SOPHIE'S admission that she had lovers had been made without the slightest comprehension of the Countess Czvorska's interpretation of the word. She had in fact two ardent young admirers, either of whom stood ready to marry her at the slightest hint of acquiescence on her part. Ignazio, her favorite, was a member of the Filharmonij,—the great orchestra,—a dreamy lad who idealized her to such a degree that she almost trembled at the thought of his possible future disillusion. The other, Paul Lavorski, was of an entirely different type. He was a worthless, stupid, brutal sort of fellow, a drinker of vodka, and a member of one of the most dangerous nihilist groups in the city. She had refused him over and over again, but he would not listen to her and continued obstinately to force his attentions upon her. “Well, if you won't marry me, I'll do something terrible—you will see!” he would threaten, lowering at her. She believed him, and her fear that he really would do something was what kept her from marrying Ignazio. In her heart, she knew that Lavorski would be quite capable of killing them both. Had she been possessed of a father or a brother things would have been different, but being an orphan she had only the priest and Ignazio to turn to, and both of them were men of peace for whom Paul had utter contempt. Sophie, thoroughly frightened by this young ruffian whom chance had thrown across her path, made up her mind that all things considered she would not marry Ignazio until a kind fate should first remove Lavorski. Meantime, she was content to work at the dressmaker's and dream ot the future when perhaps instead of living in a single room at Tiraspol she should have a flat of her own in Warsaw.

III

AS she walked home in the snowy darkness across the Alexandrovsk Bridge she wondered whether the beautiful lady whom she had just left was happy, and why she had warned her against getting married.

Outside the house in Tiraspol she found Lavorski leaning against the door post, the surrounding atmosphere pregnant with the smell of vodka.

“Well, panie!” he cried in a bullying tone, seizing her roughly around the shoulders and dragging her towards him. “I'll not wait any longer! Will you marry me or not?”

Sophie, furious, writhed out of his clasp, her first impulse to strike him in the face. Was she never to be free of this ruffian? For the first time in their intercourse her anger dominated her discretion.

“Marry you!” she retorted contemptuously. “You lazy, drunken loafer! You haven't done an honest day's work in your whole life! You're nothing but a cheap coward full of big talk. You're no good!”

She more than expected that he would fell her to the sidewalk, but she had in fact called his bluff and to her surprise he instantly assumed an air of aggrievement.

“Oh, that's the trouble, is it?” he blustered, letting go of her. “You think I'm no good, eh? Well, that's easily remedied! You'll see whether I'm a coward or not!”

He looked after her stupidly as she climbed the steps.

“You'll see, panie!” he repeated, and turning, started unsteadily back to Warsaw.

It was nine o'clock on the evening before the Czar's visit to Warsaw. The Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaivitch, Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Armies, and Uncle of His Imperial Majesty, was standing at the door of his tent smoking a Turkish cigarette in an amber holder, not because he did not like the taste of tobacco against his tongue but on account of the inconvenient size of his beard. He had taken off his riding boots, tossed his huge kepi upon his cot, thrust his enormous feet into a pair of Kurdistan slippers and with his legs wide apart, like a Colossus of Rhodes, was talking to a group of officers, among them his aide-de-camp, General Stanislaus Sobieski. Inside the flap of the tent stood a table upon which flickered two thick yellow candles.

An orderly approached from the direction of the field telegraph station, saluted, and silently passed a yellow envelope to Sobieski, who glanced at it and in turn handed it to the Grand Duke. Nikolai Nikolaivitch reached inside and lifting one of the candles held it near the telegram.

“Humph!” he growled. “His Majesty is indisposed and desires me to take his place to-morrow morning in the celebration at Warsaw.”

“But the Germans may attack——” protested the aide-de-camp.

“Kolenoff can hold them until I return,” answered the Grand Duke. “Of course it is a great bore, but somebody must go. You can't upset the whole program.

“What is the matter with his Majesty?" inquired another of the officers. “Nothing serious, I trust.”

“A constitutional weakness, I fancy!” replied Nikolai shortly. “This telegram was sent from Zeba. My nephew may have heard something——”

“Warsaw!” muttered Sobieski significantly.

The Grand Duke grunted.

“Well, we shall start at six o'clock to-morrow morning, gentlemen. We may as well make up some lost sleep. Good-night.”

The staff clicked their heels together and saluted. The Grand Duke, yawning, turned to enter the tent when an officer and two soldiers appeared escorting a man in a slouch hat and black civilian overcoat. Sobieski, recognizing him, dismissed the guard and touched Nikolai upon the arm.

“Highness!—Here is Potoki!”

“Ah!” The Grand Duke faced the visitor rather whimsically.

“Well, Mr. Ferret, what terrible thing is going to happen now?”

The man removed his hat and looked intently at the Commander-in-Chief.

“Your Royal Highness,” he answered soberly, “I have information that an attempt will be made to assassinate the Czar to-morrow morning.”

Nikolai caressed his moustache.

“That is the eighth time you have reported to me that same thing within the last six months,” he said.

“That is quite true, Your Royal Highness, but I can only submit to you what my agents tell me. This comes well substantiated.”

Illustration: She was a great deal too pretty to be a seamstress

Nikolai shrugged his immense shoulders.

“Well, they will have to assassinate me instead!”

Potoki looked shocked.

“How many times have I been assassinated, Sobieski?” continued the uncle of the Czar, “on paper!”

“Too many to be worth counting,” answered the A. D. C. “How definite is your information, Potoki?”

“Not very. We have not as yet been able to ascertain the details. But we hope to learn more before morning.”

“It may be real thing,” warned Sobieski. “And it may be the cause of His Majesty's sudden ailment,” he added as if to himself.

The Grand Duke glanced at him sternly.

“At any rate this particular ailment will not be fatal,” he remarked. “Potoki, you may as well cause it to be known throughout Warsaw that the Czar is not coming to-morrow and that I shall take his place.”

Sobieski started.

“Your Royal Highness!” he expostulated. “You certainly will not go in the circumstances,—when no preventive measures can be taken against the plotters!”

“I certainly shall!” replied the Grand Duke. “How many hundred times have I ridden through Warsaw, do you suppose? And did anybody attempt to blow me up? Warsaw is a very dull town! Go to bed, Sobieski! Surely, if anybody wanted a mark I offer a good one!” And he lifted himself to his full height and stretched his great arms into the air so that he looked like a giant pine between two small spruces. “Good-night, gentlemen!”

IV

AT approximately the same time that Nikolai Nikolaivitch was thus conversing with his officers two other scenes were being enacted in the forty miles distant capital in two houses not a hundred yards from each other in the Krakowskie Przedmiescie. Both were equally significant. In a small garret room with a single window facing upon the street, Tongeroff, Tarnowski's subordinate, was taking leave of Paul Lavorski, the latter as usual somewhat the worse for liquor. Between them, affixed solidly to the floor, stood a heavy catapult constructed of steel and so arranged that a single motion would ignite the fuse of the bomb which it held and release the spring.

“Now then!” said Tongeroff curtly, “do you fully understand what you are to do?”

“Of course,” answered Lavorski. “When I see the motor just opposite the Russian flag I'm to pull the trigger.”

“Not a moment before!”

“Not a moment before!” he echoed.

“And then you will make your escape over the roofs to the leather-maker's by the Zelazna Brama where you will put on an officer's uniform.”

“Yes,—how about the rest of the money?” demanded Lavorski cunningly. “How soon do I get that?”

“You have already received a thousand roubles. You will be given the other twenty thousand on your arrival in Kiev. A motor will call for you at the leather-maker's with passports and identification papers——”

“Good!” nodded Lavorski. “And how soon can I return to Warsaw? I've got a girl here, you know.”

“You will not return,” replied the agent provocateur. “You can send for the young lady afterwards. Good luck to you. By the way, could you give me a glass of vodka?”

“With pleasure!” exclaimed Lavorski, glad to do something for his supposed benefactor, and producing a large bottle. “Take all you want.”

Tarnowski sniffed at the contents shoved the bottle into his coat pocket.

“There's enough vodka there to put you to sleep for forty-eight hours.”

“You don't know how well I can carry my liquor!” boasted the would-be assassin. “I can drink all night long and not feel it at all. Don't you fear. The Czar will be dead by ten o'clock to-morrow morning!—And I'll have twenty thousand roubles!”

“You understand that unless the Czar is killed you get only the money you have already,” said Tongeroff.

“That's all right,” agreed Lavorski. “But he will be killed! Don't you worry, old fellow. Only I wish you would give me one more drink out of that bottle!”

DIAGONALLY across the Krakowskie Przedmiescie, in a house, the lighted windows of which were visible from the chamber in which Lavorski was secreted, Tongeroff's master was sitting at table with Lily Czvorska. It was an apartment redolent of memories, good, bad and worse. Here she met secretly all those agents of the Wilhelmstrasse who were commended to her care, and here too she met publicly those whom she wished the world to know that she met,—the fashionables and officials of Warsaw who on stated afternoons and evenings crowded about her piano and her card tables. She was an inveterate gambler and the only real criticism to which she was subjected by the dowagers of the capitol was that the Countess Czvorska and her friends played windt for a rouble a point. So it was here, naturally, that she had set the scene for this the most sensational episode in her career, the only properties necessary being a table heavy with embroidered linen, polished silver, and china as fragile as rose leaves,—these and the long-stemmed glasses that carried in their semi-transparent stems the same powder that had drugged General Ebelman of the General Staff and Morton Wales, the American courier. But this porcine Chief of Police was a different matter. About him she had no scruples whatever. Yet the simulation of sentiment was part of her business and was now almost second nature to her. It was no task at all to suffer Tarnowski to raise her hand to his lips between courses, and to gaze deep into his furtive little eyes as if she saw there all that she most admired in a man.

“Well, Ivan,” she said, “has everything been arranged to your satisfaction?”

“Perfectly,” he answered. “Tongeroff has shown real ability,—found just the man and worked him up to it partly through cupidity and partly through vainglory. I don't know how he discovered the fellow, but he did,—right at hand, anxious to prove to some girl that he was a hero and glad to pocket enough money to marry her afterwards. The house where he is concealed is just across the way. I looked at the window as I came in and there was a light in it. The poor fool is on the job—waiting, as he believes, to earn twenty thousand roubles by killing the Czar—in reality, for me to go and arrest him under the Czar's nose!”

He laughed a befuddled laugh, for he had already taken more wine than was good for him, and slapped his knee.

“But may not the 'poor fool' put a bullet through your head?” inquired Lily. “There is no use getting yourself shot in order to be made Governor General.”

“Tongeroff has taken away his pistol by this time!" snickered Tarnowski. Then he suddenly burst into hilarious laughter. “Really, there's something funny about it, isn't there, Lily?”

“There really is, Ivan!” she answered, pretending to laugh with him in spite of the depression that clouded her spirit. “Really quite funny!”

Just then Ivan wallowed to his feet, stretched himself and crossed the room to where the lackey had left the cigarettes, and the recognition of her opportunity smothered what was left of decency in her soul. Swiftly she changed the champagne glasses while his eyes were fixed on the end of his match, and then, as he turned back to the table, asked him to light another cigarette for her—the kind that Paderewski had given her.

“Now,” she smiled, filling both glasses, “here's to the really quite funny idea that's going to make my Ivan—whatever he is to become!”

He put his arm around her, as he stood beside her, and placed his glass to her lips.

“No!” she gasped, turning white and pushing away his hand while trying still to laugh, “it must be a bumper!” and she seized the other glass and drained it.

Tarnowski's bull neck swelled with pride and his little eves glittered with passion.

“I drink to you—sweetheart!" he said, as tenderly as he knew how, and throwing back his head poured the contents of the glass down his throat. Then presently he sat down and rubbed his eyes.

“It's rather hot in here—don't you think?” he asked.

In the garret room, on the other side of the Avenue, Lavorski sat tilted back in his chair with his feet on a wooden table, smoking one cigarette after another. It was nearly midnight and time had begun to hang heavily. Moreover, it is not particularly pleasant while you are waiting to kill somebody if you have nothing to drink. It was a low trick taking away his bottle of vodka! There were ten hours before he could earn his money. It was inconceivable for him to remain so long without a drink. He would have one now—right off. Paul stealthily got up and tried the door; which Tongeroff had not dared to lock, opened it, and, as quietly as he could, crept down-stairs into the street. Already that afternoon he had wandered from wine-shop to wine-shop, ostentatiously exhibiting a pocketful of gold and treating all who would drink with him, and now he began his rounds again, for Warsaw was wide open in spite of the edict against vodka, and the bars were crowded with soldiers on leave from the front. He had spoken truly when he had claimed that he could carry his liquor well, but he had never before been able to drink all he wanted, and he now made the best of his opportunity. As the night drew toward morning Lavorski experienced an irresistible impulse to see Sophie and boast of the heroic deed which he was about to perform, and to see her once more before he should be forced to flee from Warsaw.

With a bottle of vodka in either pocket he staggered to the Alexandrovsk Bridge, and with frequent pauses for internal refreshment pursued a hesitating course across it to New Praga. The sun was only just rising as he reached the house in Tiraspol that sheltered his beloved, and he sat down heavily upon a doorstep opposite. For some time he stared up at her curtained window, debating whether or not he should make known his presence, then he leaned back his head and fell into the profound slumber induced by drunkenness. When he awoke the sun was high and Sophie was coming down her front steps dressed for work. His first thought was for another drink; having taken it, he got to his feet and tacked across the sidewalk.

“Hello, there, panie!” he hiccoughed. “I told you I was going to do something. Well, the time is here! I'm going to do it!”

Sophie, fresh from her night's sleep and with her mind tranquil from not having seen her drunken lover for several days, drew back in dread from this unkempt apparition. What was Lavorski about to do? Did he intend to kill her? Mustering all her courage she faced him steadily.

“You ought to be ashamed of yourself to come here at this hour in such a condition!” she cried tremulously. “You talk of doing something,—the only thing you will ever do is to drink. Go away!”

“You don't believe it?” he mumbled. “All right, panie, wait! I am going to do something—big. You are a Pole—you hate the Russians! Well, death to the Russians! Death to the Czar!”

He leered significantly into her face, seeing that he had made an impression.

“You will only have to wait until ten o'clock to know what kind of a man I am!” he boasted. “Ten o'clock! Then all the world will know me for the Liberator of Poland. Also I shall have twenty thousand roubles! You will marry me then, eh? You will meet me in Kiev? There will be a new emperor,—or a new republic, maybe!”

Then for the first time Sophie realized that the deed which Lavorski was threatening to perpetrate, but which he did not name, was an attempt upon the life of the Czar, and, Pole as she was, she sickened with horror. Her grandfather, Casimir Zamoyenski, had been exiled to Siberia for his patriotic activities. Paul knew this. She would pretend to be thrilled at the thought of what he proposed to do, and perhaps could learn enough to prevent it. So she assumed a tone of incredulity.

“I do not believe that you have the courage to do what you say. Of course I hate the Russians! Did not my grandfather Zamoyenski die in the salt mines of Siberia? Well, then, tell me what it is and I may be able to help you.”

“Help me!” laughed Lavorski boisterously. “You?” He laughed. “I told you that you would be proud of me. It takes a man to kill an emperor. And I shall have a fortune besides. I shall throw a bomb at him in the Krakowskie Przedmiescie. Then you will no longer say that I am a coward and no good. No!”

He reeled against the door post and felt for his bottle. Sophie, trembling, pushed by him.

“I must get to work!” she cried. “You do nothing but talk. You are a man of words—not deeds! I do not believe you really intend to do anything.”

She crossed the street hurriedly, her eyes searching for an officer. Perhaps Paul was merely boasting, after all, but if not——!

“You'll see!” he shouted after her, waving his bottle. “Ten o'clock!”

When she looked back he had disappeared.

V

THE special train which brought the Grand Duke and his staff to Warsaw had hardly come to a stop within the station before Potoki, the local head of the Imperial Secret Service, made his appearance at the door of the private car where Nikolai Nikolaivitch was smoking an after-breakfast cigarette.

“Your Royal Highness,” he said, “I am glad to be able to report that the plot of which I told you last evening is all a fake engineered to enable M. Tarnowski, the present Chief of Police of Warsaw, to distinguish himself in the eyes of his Imperial Majesty by exposing it and arresting the would-be murderer!”

The Grand Duke's eyes twinkled behind their heavy brows.

“What an ingenious person he must be!” he exclaimed. “I should like to meet him. Where is he?”

“He has vanished,” answered the detective. “But there is no doubt, that if we have patience, he will turn up at the proper moment with the assassin in his custody.”

The Grand Duke laughed heartily.

“It's really a shame to disappoint him! But how do you know all this?”

“For the reason that Tarnowski, in order to prevent his own connection with the affair being discovered, employed an agent provocateur named Tongeroff who has confessed everything. Where the Chief of Police is himself he does not know, but he guarantees that no bomb will be thrown and that Tarnowski will appear and arrest the criminal at the precise psychological moment in order to save the life of His Imperial Majesty.”

“Upon which,” chuckled the Grand Duke, “we shall politely thank him for introducing a little opera bouffe into what would otherwise have been a very tame performance. Afterwards, perhaps, we shall not be so polite. Anyhow, it is something of a relief to know that the only person who is going to be blown up will be M. Tarnowski himself.”

“As the great English poet Shakespeare puts it, 'Hoist on his own petard,'” remarked Potoki, sententiously.

“But how do you know that the fellow they have put up to do the job will not actually throw the bomb?” inquired Sobieski. “Aren't you taking a good deal of a chance in relying on what Tongeroff says Tarnowski intends to do?”

“My dear Stanislaus!” answered Nikolai Nikolaivitch, yawning and feeling in the tin box on the table for another cigarette “You indulge in entirely too much anxiety. Worry kills people much oftener than gunpowder or dynamite,—by the way, has anybody found that copy of the London Times I was asking for?”

VI

THE roofs of Warsaw were white with sunlit snow as Sophie joined the crowd hurrying across the bridge. From the spires on the other side of the Vistula the chimes of the Cathedral rang cheerfully through the clear atmosphere. In this great world of flags and music and soldiers, her own insignificance appalled her. What could she do,—an ignorant little seamstress? For her to try to halt the march of fate would be like throwing herself against the current of the river full of floating ice with the idea of holding it back. Suppose she should accost one of these magnificent officers in his motor and say, “There is a plot afoot to kill the Czar!” What would he do? Either pay no attention to her or, if he did, conduct her to the prefecture where she would be subjected to a long examination. Meantime, the Czar might be dead. Already it lacked only thirty minutes of ten o'clock. Her one chance for quick action lay in securing the ear of the Chief of Police himself. So, while the bells pealed and the guns boomed out their imperial welcome, Sophie struggled through the throngs on the street to the courtyard of the prefecture.

A pimply-faced sentry was swaggering up and down inside the gate, his rifle over his shoulder.

“I—I must see the Chief of Police,” gasped Sophie, all but breathless.

The young soldier leaned upon his rifle ogling her insolently.

“You don't expect to find him here, do you, sweetheart?” he queried. “The Chief has much too important business to attend to to-day. He's at the railroad station welcoming his Imperial Majesty. I guess it's me you want to see! Just wait a few minutes till my tour is over and——”

But Sophie, oblivious of all else, heard only his statement that Tarnowski was absent.

“I must see whoever is in command here!” she cried hysterically. “There is a plot to kill the Czar! He must not come through the streets!”

The pimply-faced sentinel laughed derisively.

“Go tell that to the Civil Governor!” he said. “No one will get a chance at the Czar while M. Tarnowski is Chief of Police.”—He took a step toward her. “Listen,” he coaxed. “Do you want to see a bit of high life, little darling? Twenty minutes more——”

But Sophie had already fled through the gate. Was there nothing—nothing that she could do! Nothing, unless she could herself in some way prevent the Czar from starting. But that she realized to be an impossibility. With no definite plan in mind she wormed her way through the crowd around Sigismund Square and presently found herself on the Krakowskie Przedmiescie. The procession was already going by! She could not see anything for the big Lithuanian soldiers standing along the gutter and the people behind them cut off her view, but by determined efforts she at last managed to wedge her way to the very curb. Presently a troop of Cossacks trotted past, followed by a motor containing staff officers, and then by the cheering Sophie guessed that the Czar must be coming. Everybody was craning forward to see,—even the soldiers. This was her chance. Lowering her head she made a dash for the street, but the guard in front of her seized her by the arm and pushed her back into the crowd with a “What are you trying to do? Stay where you belong, can't you?” She had hardly recovered herself when there was a renewed outburst of enthusiasm and a wild waving of hats and flags. Unless she did something instantly, all would be lost. Frantically she ducked under the arm of the next sentry and to her astonishment found herself out in the middle of the street—alone!

VII

THE sun which had peeped into Sophie's dingy window and wakened her, flooded the drawing-room of the Countess Czvorska without making the slightest impression upon the Chief of Police of Warsaw, who lay upon his back on a chaise longue, his mouth open, snoring heavily. He was dressed in evening clothes, his shirt-front bespattered with coffee stains, and his tousled hair and disarranged necktie gave him a sottish, dissolute appearance that filled Lily with disgust. He lay just where he had thrown himself and had not moved,—one leg resting upon the floor and a pudgy hand trailing beside the table. If Lily had agreed that there was something funny in his idea she no longer felt so. She was going through the agony of suspense which leaves one in a chilly sweat. Already the people were gathering upon the sidewalks to watch the procession and she could hear the braying of distant bands. A squad of mounted police trotted down through Sigismund Square and turned what traffic there was to one side. Every house was gay with bunting and the Radziwill Palace was covered with flags. She too had flags upon the façade of her house,—an emblem made of the entwined standards of Russia and Poland—for when the Czar's automobile should be exactly abreast of these, the assassin had been told that he was to discharge the catapult which held the bomb. She had dressed herself with unusual care, but a glance in the glass had shown her face pale and mottled, and she had hastily smeared her cheeks with rouge. She looked at the little Louis XVI clock over the mantle and saw with dread that it was nearly ten o'clock. A file of soldiers—Lithuanians in black lamb's wool caps—came marching from the barracks and took their places at intervals along the curbs. The windows in the houses opposite were filled with faces,—all except one at which she dared not look. The throng was now so great that no one attempted to move along the street, but pressed against those nearer the gutter.

Suddenly a gun boomed from the citadel and a cheer went up from the crowd. The Czar had arrived. A few minutes more and his blood would be upon her head! Out over the snowy housetops the bells of the Cathedral began to ring the national anthem and the people in the street below doffed their hats. At the same time the guns commenced again—this time without pausing—boom!—boom!—boom!—boom! The crowds turned towards the Krakowskie Przedmiescie expectantly. People leaned out of the windows to see better. Then with a great clattering the Cossacks of the Don came trotting down the boulevard amid the huzzahs of the people on either side. Tho bells of the Cathedral changed to Rachmaninoff's great processional. An officer of the Preobrajensky Guards came dashing by on horseback, followed more slowly by a gray military motor containing a group of officers, some of whom Lily knew. The Czar was coming! The drama must be played out to the end.

THEN Lily noticed a sort of commotion that was going on beneath her window. A soldier was handling a young girl rather roughly, thrusting her back into the crowd along the curb. Lily saw that the child's face was deathly pale and that she had blue eyes and corn-colored hair. It seemed to her that she had seen the face before somewhere,—where, she did not have time to remember, for just at that moment the cheers redoubled. Yes, he was here! A hundred feet behind the other car came the imperial motor,—containing two men, General Sobieski and—the Grand Duke! The Czar had not come then! A spark of relief passed through her, then agony at the thought of possibly being the cause of the death of the beloved Nikolai Nikolaivitch!

The Grand Duke, his hand at the salute, good-naturedly acknowledged the greetings of the crowds, while apparently carrying on a desultory conversation with his companion. Occasionally he laughed at something Sobieski said or, his eyes resting upon some woman or child upon the sidewalk, he nodded a special recognition much to the recipient's delight. From his death not the slightest profit to her employers could possibly accrue! Her own scheme as well as Tarnowski's had gone utterly awry. This would be nothing but useless murder. She wrung her hands despairingly. Should she open the window and warn the procession to stop she would thereby inevitably acknowledge her complicity in the plot. She could only stand there,—waiting helplessly for the Grand Duke to be killed.

The motor was now almost in front of her door. Another moment and it and the occupants would be blown to pieces! She tried to turn away her eyes but could not. Suddenly a child, the same one with the corn-colored hair, darted under the arm of one of the Lithuanians out into the street in front of the motor bearing the Grand Duke, waving her arms. The chauffeur stopped his machine with a jerk. At the same instant a shout of warning arose from the crowd followed by a shattering explosion, and for a few moments a thick pall of smoke obscured what was going on below. As it cleared away Lily saw that the Lithuanians had forced back the crowd leaving an oprn space in front of the house, and that the Grand Duke was carrying the apparently lifeless body of the young girl across the sidewalk toward her door. Her first thought was to make her escape, but she realized immediately that neither she nor Tarnowski could possibly get away from the house undetected. Yet how could she explain his presence there,—were it discovered? Meantime, however, the Grand Duke, followed by his staff was coming up the steps. She would have to bluff it out,—make the best of it. After all, no one would ever suspect the Countess Czvorska of complicity in an attempt upon the life of Nikolai Nikolaivitch. With her right hand she pulled the bell that summoned her men servants, while with the other she hastily adjusted her hair. Then she stepped out into the hall and posed herself upon the landing at the head of the flight of marble steps which led down to the entrance.

“Open the doors for His Royal Highness!” she cried to her footmen. “Open the doors for the Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaivitch!”

In the adjacent apartment Tarnowski, still comatose upon his chaise longue, imagined that he heard something. Just what had aroused him, he did not know. Aware neither of where he was nor how he got there he was conscious only that his throat was like the desert sand burning under a noonday sun. Opening his eyes he raised himself to a sitting position and slowly looked stupidly about him for something to drink. There was none in sight.

“Vodka!” he muttered to the world at large.

But the world remained oblivious of his remark. Tarnowski, feeling distinctly queer and not a little dizzy, arose weakly to his feet and staggered to the door of the apartment. There were people outside, people who could get him what he wanted.

Vodka!” he shouted at the door. “Vodka!”

But the door and the people behind it were annoyingly unresponsive. His already red face became even redder with anger. Once—twice—he tried to turn the handle; then, leaning his whole weight against it, he burst it open and, a disheveled and drunken apparition, plunged forward upon the landing at the head of the stairs just as the Grand Duke, carrying Sophie in his arms and followed by Sobieski, neared the top.

“Vodka!” bellowed Tarnowski as he lunged forward. “Bring me vodka!”

Sobieski gave him a single look,—and struck a single blow with the flat of his sword. The Chief of Police reeled and pitched headlong down the marble stairs.

“Arrest that man!” shouted the aide-de-camp to the Cossacks below. “He is guilty of high treason!” Then to Nikolai. “That was Tarnowski—the man they have been looking for! We have stumbled into a nest of nihilists. Tongeroff fooled Potoki into believing that the plot was a sham instead of a real one. They were all in it together—including this woman. Your Royal Highness has had a most providential escape!”

Nikolai did not reply. He was engrossed in the thought that the child in his arms might have sacrificed herself for him. But now, observing Lily for the first tine, he addressed her: “Madame, I am invading your mansion in the interest of humanity. This young girl has, I believe, saved my rather worthless life. Can you give me a bed for her?”

“My own room is at your service, your Royal Highness!” Lily replied, looking him boldly in the face. “I trust the girl is not seriously injured. Shall I send for a doctor?”

“My own staff physician will look after her,” answered the Grand Duke, following Lily into her chamber which opened upon the landing from the other side, and placing Sophie gently upon the bed. “He will be here in a moment.”

He bent over Sophie's pallid face and then placed his great head gently against her breast.

“Her heart is beating!” he said, relieved.

Then he stepped back for the doctor who had hurried up the stairs after them.

At that moment Sophie opened her eyes.

“She will be all right presently. She was only stunned by a flying splinter from the bomb,” announced the doctor, feeling her pulse.

The Grand Duke took one of Sophie's thin hands between his giant paws.

“You have saved my life, little one!” he said gently, as she gazed up into his face. “If it had not been mine it would have been your Emperor's. We are both duly grateful. Sometime you shall be adequately rewarded. For the present—” and he unpinned the decoration of the Cross of St. George from his breast, “I shall give you this as a keepsake, trusting that my nephew will confirm it.”

He bent over, pinned the cross upon her shabby dress, and kissed her on the forehead.

“Stay here and look after her, doctor. Now, gentlemen, we must hurry on to the Cathedral.”

Nikolai Nikolaivitch turned to the door and was about to pass out when he caught sight of Lily.

“General Sobieski,” he said shortly, “put this woman under arrest. She is evidently Tarnowski's accomplice. We must make haste, gentlemen.”

Lily threw back her shoulders proudly and raised her head. She had realized from the first that in drugging the Chief of Police and keeping him in her own house she had linked herself with his guilt; and she now perceived that neither of them would ever be able to prove that they had not intended to kill the Czar. Yet she would never go to Siberia nor stand up to meet her death before a firing squad—the drop of prussic acid in her ring would save her from either fate.

“Madame,” said Sobieski after a moment's silence, “I very much regret——”

“There is nothing to regret,” interrupted Lily bitterly, “—except life!”

“Have you anything you would like to take with you?” he inquired politely. “Or any person you would care to see?”

“There is nothing and nobody that I am sorry to leave!” Then her glance fell upon the bed and as an afterthought she added: “I should like to say good-bye to this girl.”

Sophie was lying there quite peacefully, wondering how she came to be in such a wonderful soft bed all covered with lace in the same room with the beautiful lady who had advised her not to marry. Just then the beautiful lady with a faint smile came over and stood beside the bed. She looked very pale and there were hollows under her eyes.

“I did not expect to see you again so soon, my dear,” said the Countess kindly.

Sophie smiled a little in return. But she mustered enough courage to say:

“My lady,—why did you tell me not to marry?”

“Oh! You remember that, do you? If you know any honest man that is in love with you marry him as soon as you can.”

“I shall!” answered Sophie.

Lily turned to General Sobieski, as a squad of Cossacks filed into the room.

“Now I am ready to go,” she said.