"Ah! you in England, here, are always _debonnaire_, while we in
Charleroi are always _triste_, always."
The dark-eyed, handsome girl sighed, lying lazily back among the
cushions of the boat, allowing the rudder-lines to hang so loosely that
our course became somewhat erratic. I had been spending one of the hot
afternoons of last July gossiping and drinking tea on the riverside lawn
of a friend's house at Datchet, and now at sunset had taken for a row
this pretty Belgian whom my hostess had introduced as Cecile Demage.
"Is this your first visit to London?" I asked, noticing she spoke
English fluently, but with a pleasing accent.
"Oh no," she replied, laughing. "I have been here already two times. I
like your country so very much."
"And you come here for pleasure--just for a little holiday?"
"Yes," she answered, lifting her long lashes for an instant. "Of course
I travel for--for pleasure always."
Fixing my eyes upon her steadily, I remained silent, pulling long, slow
strokes. The evening was calm and delightful, but the blood-red
after-glow no longer reflected on the placid Thames, for already the
purple haze was gathering.
"You know many Belgians in London, I suppose?" I said at last.
"Oh dear, no!" she answered, with a rippling laugh, toying with one of
her gloves that lay on the cushion beside her. "True, I know some of
the people at our Legation; but I come abroad to visit the English, not
the Belgians."
"And you have never visited West Hill, Sydenham, mademoiselle?" I
asked, resting upon the oars suddenly, and looking straight into her
dark, wide-open eyes.
She started, but next second recovered her self-possession.
"No, not to my knowledge."
"And have you never met Fedor Nikiforovitch; has he never addressed you
by your proper name, Sonia Ostroff?"
The colour left her face instantly, as she started up with a look of
abject terror in her eyes.
"M'sieur is of the Secret Police!" she gasped hoarsely, clenching her
hands. "_Dieu_! Then I am betrayed!"
"No," I answered calmly. "I am aware that mademoiselle is an active
member of the Narodnaya Volya, but, I, too, am a friend of the Cause;"
and I added a word which signifies indivisibility, and is the recognised
password of the Circle of desperate Russian revolutionists to which she
belonged. It gave her confidence, and she sank back upon the cushions,
questioning me how I had recognised her.
"I heard you were masquerading in London," I said; "and among other
members of the Circle who are here at the present moment are young Paul
Tchartkoff, Sergius Karamasoff, and Ivan Petrovitch."
"But--but who are you, m'sieur, that you should know so much about the
Narodnaya Volya? When we were introduced, I failed to catch your name
distinctly."
"My name is Andrew Verney, and I am an English journalist."
"Andrew Verney! Ah! of course I have heard of you many times! You were
the English newspaper correspondent who, while living at Warsaw, became
one of Us, and wrote articles to your journal advocating the
emancipation of our country and the inviolability of the individual and
of his rights as a man. You assisted us in bringing our case vividly
before the English people, and in raising money to carry on the
propaganda. But, alas! the iron hand of the Minister of the Interior
fell upon you."
"Yes," I said, laughing; "I was expelled with a cancelled passport, and
an intimation from the Press Bureau at Petersburg that whatever I wrote
in future would not be allowed to enter Russia."
Our boat was drifting, so I bent again to the oars, and rowed back to
the lawn of our hostess.
The beautiful girl, who, lolling back upon the saddlebags, commenced to
chatter in French about mutual friends in Warsaw, in Moscow, and in
Petersburg, was none other than Sonia Ostroff, known to every Nihilist
in and out of Russia as "The Sylph of the Terror." Her slim figure, her
childish face, her delicate complexion and charming dimples made her
appear little more than a girl; yet I well knew how her bold, daring
schemes had caused the Tzar Alexander to tremble. The daughter of a
wealthy widow moving in the best society in Petersburg, she had become
imbued with convictions that had induced her to join the Nihilists.
From that moment she had become one of their most active members, and on
the death of her mother, devoted all the money she inherited to the
Cause. Many were the remarkable stories I had heard of the manner in
which she had arranged attempts upon the lives of the Tzar and his
Ministers; how, on one occasion, with extraordinary courage, she had
taken the life of a police spy with her own hand; and how cleverly she
had always managed to elude the vigilance of the ubiquitous agents of
the Third Section of the Ministry of the Interior. Yet, as she laughed
lightly, and pulled the rudder-line sharply, bringing us up to the steps
before our hostess's house, few would have suspected Cecile Demage, the
_chic_, flippant daughter of a Belgian mine-owner, to be the same person
as Sonia Ostroff, the renowned "Sylph of the Terror," who spent greater
part of her time in hiding from the police in the underground cellar of
a presumably disused house near the Ekaterinski in Petersburg.
Half an hour later we were sitting opposite each other at dinner, where
she shone brilliantly as a conversationalist. Several persons were
present who had met her in society in Brussels; but none suspected the
truth--I alone held her secret.
When later that night we bade each other farewell at Waterloo Station,
she managed to whisper, "I shall be at Fedor's on Thursday night at
nine. Meet me there. Do not fail."
"Very well," I replied; and, allowing her well-gloved hand to rest in
mine for a moment, she bade me _au revoir_, entered a cab, and was
driven away.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
As I walked into Fedor Nikiforovitch's handsomely-furnished drawing-room
at Sydenham to keep my appointment, my host rose to greet me. He was
tall, thin and slightly bent by age. In Warsaw I had known him as an
active revolutionist, and, indeed, the men who were with him--
Tchartkoff, Petrovitch, and Karamasoff--were a trio of daring fellows,
who, alone and unaided, had committed many startling outrages. Several
others were in the room, and among them I noticed two ladies, Mascha
Karelin and Vera Irteneff, whom I had frequently met at secret meetings
of the Circle at Warsaw.
"Sonia told me you were coming," Fedor said gayly. "This is the final
council. The attempt will be made to-morrow," he added in a whisper.
"The attempt? What do you mean?" I asked.
"It will all be explained in due course," he said, turning away to greet
another member who at that moment arrived.
In a few moments, Sonia, in a striking evening toilet, and wearing a
magnificent diamond necklet, entered smiling, being greeted
enthusiastically on every hand. We exchanged a few words, then, when
every one was seated in silent expectancy, "The Sylph of the Terror"
took up a position on the tiger's skin stretched before the hearth. The
door having been closed, and precautions taken so that there should be
no eavesdroppers at the windows that overlooked the flower-garden at the
rear, in clear, distinct tones she addressed the assemblage in Russian
as "Fellow-councillors of the Narodnaya Volya." She referred to the
manifesto of the Narodnoe Pravo, and said, "Autocracy, after receiving
its most vivid expression and impersonation in the reign of the present
Tzar, has with irrefutable clearness proved its impotence to create such
an order of things as should secure our country the fullest and most
regular developments of all her spiritual and material forces." Then,
with a fire of enthusiasm burning in her dark, flashing eyes, she
referred to the thousands of political prisoners, many of them their own
relatives and friends, who had been banished without trial to Siberia,
to rot in the dreaded silver mines of Nerchinsk, or die of fever in the
filthy _etapes_ of the Great Post Road.
"Desperate cases require desperate remedies," she continued, glancing
around her small audience. "Hundreds of our innocent comrades are at
this moment being arrested in Warsaw, and hurried off to the
Trans-Baikal without trial, merely because Gourko desires to curry
favour with his Imperial master."
"Shame!" they cried, with one accord.
"He must die," ejaculated Fedor.
"Shall we allow our brothers and our sisters to be snatched from us
without raising a hand to save them?" she asked excitedly. "No. Long
enough have we been idle. To-morrow, here, in London, we shall strike
such a blow for the liberty of Russia that the world will be convulsed."
"All is ready, sister," Fedor observed. "The arrangements for escape
are perfect. By midnight to-morrow we shall have separated, and not
even the bloodhounds of the Third Section will be able to trace us."
"Then let us see the shell," she said. Walking over to a bookcase, he
touched a spring, and part of one of the rows of books flew open,
disclosing a secret cupboard behind. The backs of the books were
imitations, concealing a spacious niche, from which the Nihilist drew
forth a thick volume about seven inches long by five wide, bound in
black cloth. It was an imitation of a popular edition of Charles Lamb's
works.
The bomb was in the form of a book!
Sonia, into whose delicate hands he gave it, examined it critically,
with a grim smile of satisfaction, then placed it carefully upon a
little Moorish coffee-stool at her side.
"It is excellently made, excites no suspicion, and reflects the greatest
credit upon you, Fedor. You are indeed a genius!" she said, laughing.
Then, seriously, she asked, "Is every one present prepared to sacrifice
his or her life in this attempt?"
"We are," they answered, with one accord.
"I think, then, that we are all agreed both as to the necessity of this
action, as well as to the manner the _coup_ shall be accomplished. In
order that each one's memory shall be refreshed, I will briefly repeat
the arrangements. To-morrow night, punctually at eight o'clock, the man
condemned to die will visit the Lyceum Theatre, entering by the private
door in Burleigh Street. The person using the shell must stand at the
Strand corner of that street, and the blow must be delivered just as the
carriage turns from the Strand, so that in the crowd in the latter
thoroughfare escape may be easy. It must be distinctly remembered,
however, that the personage to be `removed' will occupy the second
carriage--not the first."
"Will he be alone?" asked the dark-bearded ruffianly fellow I knew as
Sergius Karamasoff.
"Yes. We have taken due precautions. Come, let us decide who shall
deliver the blow." And while Fedor wrote a word on a piece of paper,
and folding it, placed it with eleven other similar pieces in a Dresden
bowl, Sonia Ostroff continued to discuss where they should next meet
after the _coup_. At last it was arranged, upon her suggestion, that
they should all assemble at the house of Karamasoff in Warsaw at 9 p.m.
on the 21st, thus allowing a fortnight in which to get back to Poland.
The scraps of paper were shuffled, and everyone drew, including myself,
for I had taken the oath to the revolutionary section of the Narodnaya
Volya, and, being present, was therefore compelled to share the risk.
Judge my joy, however, on opening mine and finding it a blank! The
person to whom the dangerous task fell made no sign, therefore all were
unaware who would make the attempt. The strictest secrecy is always
preserved in a Nihilist Circle, so that the members are never aware of
the identity of the person who commits an outrage.
But the business of the secret council was over, the cunningly-concealed
bomb was removed to a place where it was not likely to be accidentally
knocked down, and the remainder of the evening passed in pleasant
conversation. I had become fascinated by Sonia's beauty, and when I
found myself sitting alone with her in a corner of the room where we
could not be overheard, I whispered into her ear words of love and
tenderness. She, on her part, seemed to have no aversion to a mild
flirtation, and admitted frankly that she had pleasant recollections of
the sunset hour upon the Thames.
"Who is the man condemned to death?" I asked presently.
"What! are you unaware?" she exclaimed in surprise. "Why, the
Tzarevitch."
"The Tzarevitch? And you intend to murder him?"
She shrugged her shoulders, replying, "We have followed him here because
he is not so closely guarded as in Petersburg. If we succeed, there
will be no heir-apparent, for the Grand Duke George is already dying in
the Caucasus, and the days of the autocrat Alexander are numbered. He
will die sooner than the world imagines."
The flippant manner in which she spoke of death appalled me;
nevertheless, when I bade her farewell, I was deeply in love with her,
and promised to be in the vicinity of the scene of the tragedy on the
morrow.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
I knew all the details of this desperate plot to kill the Russian
heir-apparent--then on a brief visit to London with his _fiancee_--yet I
dared not inform the police, for the terrible vengeance of the Circle
was always swift and always fatal. Helpless to avert the calamity, I
passed the long day in breathless anxiety, dreading the fatal moment
when the blow would be struck. By some strange intuition, I felt that
my every action was watched by emissaries of the Nihilists, who feared
treachery on my part, for, as a journalist, I was personally acquainted
with a number of officers at Scotland Yard. Hour by hour I strove to
devise some plan by which I might prevent the foul murder that was about
to be perpetrated; but, alas! no solution of the problem presented
itself. The plans had been laid with such care and forethought, that
undoubtedly the Tzarevitch would fall a victim, and Russia would be
plunged into mourning.
At length twilight deepened into night, and as I walked from Charing
Cross down the noisy, bustling Strand, the gas lamps were already
alight, and the _queues_ were forming outside the theatres. On passing
the steps leading to Exeter Hall, I was startled by a hand being laid
upon my arm, and found beside me an elderly woman, poorly-clad, wearing
a faded and battered bonnet, with a black, threadbare shawl wrapped
around her.
"You have not failed, then?" she exclaimed in low tones, that in an
instant I recognised.
"You, Sonia? And in this disguise!" I cried.
"Hush! or we may be overheard!" she said quickly. "The choice fell upon
me, but--but I have had a fainting fit, caused by over-excitement, and I
cannot trust myself;" and she caused me to walk back and turn up Exeter
Street, a short and practically deserted thoroughfare close by.
"Think, are not the risks too great?" I urged. "Why not abandon this
attempt?"
"I have sworn to make it," she answered determinedly.
"And the others--where are they?"
"An alarm has been raised. Baranoff, the chief of the Third Section,
suspects, and is in London in search of us. We have all left England,
with the exception of Karamasoff, who remains to witness the attempt,
and make a report to the council."
"And you will risk your life and liberty by endeavouring to strike this
murderous blow, of which you do not feel yourself physically capable?
For my sake, Sonia, defer the attempt until another occasion."
"I cannot, even though _you_ love me;" and her slim fingers tightened
upon mine. Then, a second later, she clasped her hands to her forehead,
and, reeling, would have fallen, had I not supported her.
"How--how very foolish I am!" she said, a few moments later. "Forgive
me." Then, as she steadied herself and strolled slowly by my side, she
suddenly asked earnestly--
"Do you really love me, Andrew?"
"I do," I answered fervently.
"Then dare you--dare you, for my sake, Andrew--dare you _throw the
bomb_?" she whispered hoarsely.
Her suggestion startled me. I halted amazed.
"I--I could not--I really could not," I stammered.
"Ah! it is as I thought--you do not love me," she said reproachfully.
"But it is time I took up my position at the next corner. If I die, it
will be because you refused your assistance. Farewell!"
Before I could detain her, she had turned into the Strand, and was lost
among the bustling crowd. Hurrying, I overtook her before she gained
the corner of Burleigh Street.
"I have changed my mind, Sonia," I said. "Give it to me; I will act in
your stead. Fly to a place of safety, and I will meet you in Warsaw on
the day appointed."
From beneath her shawl she carefully handed me the bomb. It was heavy,
weighing fully eight pounds. Slipping it into the capacious pocket of
the covert coat I was wearing, I stood at the street corner. Sonia
refused to leave, declaring that she would remain to witness the death
of the son of the Autocrat.
Trembling and breathless, I stood dreading the fatal moment, knowing
that my pocket contained sufficient picric acid to wreck the whole
street.
Seconds seemed hours.
"As soon as you have thrown it, fly for your life," urged Sonia. Then
we remained silent in watchful readiness.
Suddenly, almost before we were aware of it, one of the Marlborough
House carriages dashed round the corner past us, and drew up before the
small door at the rear of the Lyceum. It was an exciting moment.
Without hesitation I took out the deadly missile, and none too soon,
indeed, for a second later the Tzarevitch's carriage followed, and just
as it passed, I hurled it with all my force against the wheels.
Turning, I dashed away across to the opposite side of the Strand, and
was there overtaken, a few seconds later, by Sonia and Karamasoff.
"It has not exploded!" they panted, in one breath.
"No," I said. "How do you account for it?"
"The tube of acid has not broken," Karamasoff said. "I predicted
failure when I saw it. But let us go. Sooner or later a horse will
kick it, or a wheel will pass over it, and then--pouf!"
"Farewell," I said, and we hurriedly separated, each going in a
different direction, both of my companions momentarily expecting to hear
a terrific report.
But they were disappointed, for a quarter of an hour later I dropped
Nikiforovitch's bomb into the Thames from Waterloo Bridge, and next day
an urchin was rewarded with a shilling for bringing to my chambers a
copy of Lamb's works. It was sadly soiled and damaged, but bore on its
fly-leaf my name and address. He said he had found it in the gutter in
Burleigh Street!
Events have occurred rapidly since that memorable evening. The
Tzarevitch, unaware of how near he was to a swift and terrible death, is
now Nicholas II of Russia; while the pretty Sonia Ostroff, still in
ignorance of how her plot was thwarted, is at the present moment toiling
in the gloomy depths of the Savenski mine in Eastern Siberia.