For a second the famous chief of Secret Police turned his cunning,
steel-blue eyes upon mine and bowed slightly, after making obeisance to
His Majesty.
"Why, I believed, Mr Trewinnard, that you were still in Siberia!" he
said with a crafty smile. Though my bitterest enemy, he always feigned
the greatest friendliness.
"Trewinnard has just revealed a very painful and serious fact, Markoff,"
exclaimed the Emperor, in a deep, earnest voice. "Her Highness the
Grand Duchess Natalia has disappeared."
The General gave no sign of surprise.
"It has already been reported to us," was his calm answer. "I have not
reported it, in turn, to Your Majesty, fearing to cause undue alarm.
Both here and in England we are instituting every possible inquiry."
"Another plot," I remarked, with considerable sarcasm, I fear.
"Probably," was His Excellency's reply, as he turned to His Imperial
Master, and in that fawning voice of his, added: "Your Majesty may rest
assured that if Her Highness be alive she will be found, wherever she
may be."
Hatred--hatred most intense--arose within my heart as I glanced at the
sinister face of the favourite before me, the man who had deliberately
ordered the commission of that crime which had resulted in the death of
the Emperor's brother, the Grand Duke Nicholas. To his orders had been
due that exciting episode in which I had so nearly lost my life in
Siberia; at his orders, too, poor Marya de Rosen had been deliberately
sent to her grave; and at his orders had been planned the conspiracy
against the Grand Duchess which Danilo Danilovitch had intended to carry
into execution, and would no doubt have done, had he not been prevented
by Hartwig's boldness.
I longed to turn and denounce him before his Imperial Master. Indeed,
hot, angry words were upon my lips, but I suppressed them. No! The
time was not yet ripe. Natalia herself had promised to make the
revelations, and to her I must leave them.