A dead silence fell in that small, business-like room, wherein the
monarch, the hardest-working man in the Empire, transacted the
complicated business of the great Russian nation.
Outside could be heard a sharp word of command, followed by the heavy
tramp of soldiers and the roll of drums. The sentries were changing
guard.
Slowly--very slowly--His Majesty placed a sheet of blotting-paper over
the document he had written, and then turning to the tearful girl,
asked:
"Will not this individual, Danilo Danilovitch, furnish me with proofs?
He is a Revolutionist, yet that is no reason why I should not see him.
From what you tell me, Markoff holds him in his power by constantly
threatening to betray him to his comrades as a police-spy. I must see
him. Where is he?"
"He has accompanied us from London, Your Majesty," was my reply. "I had
some difficulty in assuring him that he would obtain justice at Your
Majesty's hands."
"He is an assassin. He killed my brother Nicholas; yet it seems--if
what you tell me be true--that Markoff compelled him to commit this
crime."
"Without a doubt," was my reply.
"Then, Revolutionist or not, I will see him," and he touched the
electric button placed in the side of his writing-table.
A sentry appeared instantly, and at my suggestion His Majesty permitted
me to go down the long corridor, at the end of which the dark,
thin-faced man, in a rather shabby black suit, was sitting in a small
ante-room, outside which stood a tall, statuesque Cossack sentry.
A few words of explanation, and somewhat reluctantly Danilovitch rose
and followed me into the presence of the man he was ever plotting to
kill.
The Emperor received him most graciously, and ordered him to be seated,
saying:
"My niece here and Mr Trewinnard have been speaking of you, Danilo
Danilovitch, and have told me certain astounding things."
The man looked up at his Sovereign, pale and frightened, and His
Majesty, realising this, at once put him at his ease by adding: "I know
that, in secret, you are the mysterious `One' who directs the
revolutionary movement throughout the Empire, and the constant
conspiracies directed against my own person. Well," he laughed, "I
hope, Danilovitch, you will not find me so terrible as you have been led
to expect, and, further, that when you leave here you will think a
little better of the man whose duty it is to rule the Russian nation
than you hitherto have done. Now," he asked, looking straight at the
man, "are you prepared to speak with me openly and frankly, as I am
prepared to speak to you?"
"I am, Your Majesty," he said.
"Then answer me a few questions," urged the Imperial autocrat. "First,
tell me whether these constant conspiracies against myself--these plots
for which so many hundreds are being banished to Siberia--are genuine
ones formed by those who really desire to take my life?"
"No, Sire," was the answer. "The last genuine plot was the one in
Samara, nearly two years ago. Your Majesty escaped only by a few
seconds."
"When the railway line was blown up just outside the station; I
remember," said the Emperor, with a grim smile. "Four of your
fellow-conspirators were killed by their own explosives."
"That was the last genuine plot. All the recent ones have been
suggested by General Markoff, head of the Secret Police."
"With your assistance?"
The man nodded in the affirmative.
"Then you betray your fellow-conspirators for payment--eh?"
"Because I am compelled. I, alas! took a false step once, and His
Excellency the General has taken advantage of it ever since. He forces
me to act according to his wishes, to conspire, to betray--to murder if
necessity arises--because he knows how I dread the truth becoming known
to the secret revolutionary committee, and how I fully realise the
terrible fate which must befall me if the actual facts were ever
revealed. The Terrorists entertain no sympathy with their betrayer."
"I quite understand that," remarked the Sovereign. And then, in
gracious words, he closely questioned him regarding the assassination of
the Grand Duke Peter outside the Opera House in Warsaw, and heard the
ghastly truth of Markoff's crime from the witness's own lips.
"I read the letters which I secured from the Palace of the Grand Duke
Nicholas," he admitted. "They were to the same effect as Your Majesty
has said. In one of them His Excellency the General confessed his
crime."
"You threw the bomb which killed my brother, the Grand Duke Nicholas?"
"It was intended to kill Her Highness the Grand Duchess," and he
indicated Natalia, "and also the Englishman, Mr Trewinnard. The
General was plotting the death of both of them, fearing that they knew
his secret."
"And in England there was another conspiracy against them--eh?"
"Yes," replied the man known as the Shoemaker of Kazan. "But Mr
Trewinnard and the Chief of Criminal Police, Ivan Hartwig, discovered
me, and dared me to commit the outrage on pain of betrayal to my
friends. Hence I have been between two stools--compelled by Markoff and
defied by Hartwig. At last, in desperation, I sent an anonymous letter
to Her Highness warning her, with the fortunate result that both she and
her lover--a young Englishman named Drury--disappeared, and even the
Secret Police were unable to discover their whereabouts. I did so in
order to gain time, for I had no motive in taking Her Highness's life,
although if I refused to act I knew what the result must inevitably be."
"All this astounds me," declared the Emperor. "I never dreamed that I
was being thus misled, or that Markoff was acting with such cunning and
unscrupulousness against the interests of the dynasty and the nation. I
see the true situation. You, Danilo Danilovitch, are a Revolutionist--
not by conviction, but because of the drastic action of the Secret
Police, the real rulers of Russia. Therefore, read that," and he took
from his table the Imperial ukase and handed it to him.
When he had read it he returned it to the Emperor's hand, and murmured:
"Thank God! All Russia will praise Your Majesty for your clemency. It
is the reform for which we have been craving for the past twenty years--
fair trial, and after conviction a just punishment. But we have, alas!
only had arrest and prompt banishment without trial. Every man and
woman in Russia has hitherto been at the mercy of any police-spy or any
secret enemy."
"My only wish is to give justice to the nation," declared the Sovereign,
his dark, thoughtful eyes turned upon the dynamitard whose word was law
to every Terrorist from Archangel to Odessa, and from Wirballen to
Ekaterinburg.
"And, Sire, on behalf of the Party of the People's Will I beg to thank
you for granting it to us," said the man, whose keen, highly-intelligent
face was now slightly flushed.
"What I have heard to-day from my niece's lips, from Mr Trewinnard and
from yourself, has caused the gravest thoughts to arise within me," His
Majesty declared after a slight pause. "Injustice has, I see, been done
on every hand, and the Secret Police has been administered by one who,
it seems, is admittedly an assassin. It is now for me to remedy that--
and to do so by drastic measures."
"And the whole nation will praise Your Majesty," Danilovitch replied.
"I am a Revolutionist, it is true, but I have been forced--forced
against my will--to formulate these false plots for the corrupt Secret
Police to unearth. I declare most solemnly to Your Majesty that my
position as leader of this Party and at the same time an
_agent-provocateur_ has been a source of constant danger and hourly
terror. In order to hide my secret, I was unfortunately compelled to
commit murder--to kill the woman I loved. She discovered the truth, and
would have exposed me to the vengeance which the Party never fails to
mete out to its betrayers. Markoff had given me my liberty and immunity
from arrest in exchange for my services to him. He held me in his
power, body and soul, and, because of that, I was forced to strike down
the woman I loved," he added, with a catch in his voice. "And--and--"
he said, standing before the Emperor, "I crave Your Majesty's clemency.
I--I crave a pardon for that act for which I have ever been truly
penitent."
"A pardon is granted," was the reply in a firm, deep voice. "You killed
my brother Nicholas under compulsion. But on account of your open
confession and the service rendered to me by these revelations, I must
forgive you. I see that your actions have, all along, been controlled
by Serge Markoff. Now," he added, "what more can you tell me regarding
this maladministration of the police?"
Danilovitch threw himself upon his knees and kissed the Emperor's hand,
thanking him deeply and declaring that he would never take any further
part in the revolutionary movement in the future, but exercise all his
influence to crush and stamp it out.
Then, when he had risen again to his feet, he addressed His Majesty,
saying:
"The Secret Police, as at present organised, manufacture
revolutionaries. I was a loyal, law-abiding Russian before the police
arrested my brother and my wife illegally, and sent them to Siberia
without trial. Then I rose, like thousands of others have done, and
fell into the trap which Markoff's agents so cleverly prepared. No one
has been safe from arrest in Russia--"
"Until to-day," the Emperor interrupted. "The ukase I have written is
the law of the Empire from this hour."
"Ah! God be thanked!" cried the man, placing his hands together
fervently. "Probably no man can tell the many crimes and injustices for
which General Markoff has been responsible. You want to know some of
them--some within my own knowledge," he went on. "Well, he was
responsible for the great plot in Moscow a year ago when the little
Tzarevitch so narrowly escaped. Seventeen people were killed and
twenty-three were injured by the six bombs which were thrown, and nearly
one hundred innocent persons were sent to Schusselburg or to Siberia in
consequence."
"Did you formulate that plot?" the Emperor asked.
"I did. Also at Markoff's orders the one at Nikolaiev where the young
woman, Vera Vogel, shot the Governor-General of Kherson and two of his
Cossacks. Again at Markoff's demand, I formed the plot whereby, near
Tchirskaia, the bridge over the Don was blown up; fortunately just
before Your Majesty's train reached it. It was I who pressed the
electrical contact--I pressed it purposely a few moments too quickly, as
I was determined not to be the cause of that wholesale loss of life
which must have resulted had the train fallen into the river. Another
attempt was the Zuroff affair, when an infernal machine charged with
nitro-glycerine was not long ago actually found within the Winter
Palace--placed there by an unknown hand in order to terrify Your
Majesty. But I tell you the hand that placed it where it was found was
that of Serge Markoff himself--the same hand which killed His Imperial
Highness the Grand Duke Peter in order to prevent His Highness telling
Your Majesty certain ugly truths which he had accidentally discovered.
And," he went on, "there were many other conspiracies of various kinds
conceived for the sole purpose of keeping the Empire ever in a state of
unrest and the arrest of hundreds of the innocent of both sexes.
Indeed, explosives--picric acid, nitro-glycerine, melinite and cordite--
were supplied to us from a secret source. Sometimes, too, when I
furnished a list of, say, ten or a dozen of those implicated in a plot,
the police would arrest them with probably thirty others besides, people
taken haphazard in the streets or in the houses. Whole families have
been banished, men dragged from their wives, women from their husbands
and children, and though innocent were consigned to those terrible
oubliettes beneath the level of the lake at Schusselburg, or in the
Fortress of Peter and Paul. To adequately describe all the fierce
brutality, the gross injustice and the ingenious plots conceived and
financed by Serge Markoff would be impossible. I only speak of those in
which I, as his unwilling catspaw, have been implicated."
Her Highness and myself had listened to this amazing confession without
uttering a word.
The Emperor, intensely interested in the man's story, put to him many
questions, some concerning the demands of the Party of the People's
Will, others in which he requested further details concerning Markoff's
crimes against persons, and against the State.
"This man in whom for years I have placed such implicit confidence has
played me false!" cried the ruler presently, his face pale as he struck
the table fiercely in his anger. "He has plotted with the Terrorists
against me! He has been responsible for several attempts from which I
have narrowly escaped with my life. Therefore he shall answer to me--
this cunning knave who is actually my brother's assassin! He shall pay
the penalty of his crimes!"
"All Russia knows that at Your Majesty's hands we always receive
justice," the Revolutionist said. "From the Ministry, however, we never
do. They are our oppressors--our murderers."
"And you Revolutionists wish to kill me because of the misdeeds of my
Ministers!" cried the Emperor in reproach.
"If Your Majesty dismisses and punishes those who are responsible, then
there will be no more Terrorism in Russia. I am a leader; I have bred
and reared the serpent of the Revolution, and I myself can strangle it--
and I promise Your Majesty that as soon as General Markoff is removed
from office--I will do so."