THE NEXT NIHILIST PLOT.
It seemed to me when I thought over my interview with Paula Tueski,
that the complications which surrounded me could not possibly be
increased. It was of course hopeless to think of leaving Russia except
by some stratagem, or in disguise; and this would be all the more
difficult because Olga must leave first, and her flight would
undoubtedly turn attention on me.
A positively baffling set of conditions faced me therefore, whichever
way I turned. If I stayed on, Paula Tueski would insist on the
marriage, and the crisis would come that way. If I attempted to go,
she herself would join with the police in following me, and the mere
endeavour to fly would give just that colour to her story which would
make all the world ready to believe it.
Again, if I tried the remaining alternative of proclaiming my identity,
I had so egregiously compromised myself that I could not hope to escape
heavy punishment of some kind; while it would certainly implicate Olga
and at the same time have no effect against the direct lies Paula
Tueski was ready to swear.
Above all, a great change had come over me. I wished to live and keep
my freedom. The old indifference and apathy were gone. My object now
was to get both Olga and myself out of the country in safety; and thus
I took diametrically opposite views of difficulties which a few days
previously--before I had made the discovery of my love for Olga--would
have caused me little more than a laugh of amused perplexity.
Baffling as the puzzle was, however, it became infinitely more involved
and perilous a few days later. Two fresh complications came to kill
even every forlorn hope.
My Nihilist friends were responsible for the first.
The belief that I had struck down the Chief of the Secret Police and
had done it in a manner so secret, mysterious, and impenetrable that it
staggered the most ingenious police spies and defied the efforts of the
astutest detectives, surrounded me with a glamour of wholly undeserved
and undesired reputation.
The first intimation of this had reached me through Olga, and was
followed by several others; and I received clear proof that I was now
regarded as a sort of leader of the forlorn hopes of these wild and
desperate men. A man who could alone and unaided achieve what I was
believed to have accomplished was held capable of the greatest deeds.
So they appeared to argue; and I was accordingly picked out next for a
task of infinite danger and hazard in a plot of even more tremendous
consequences than that of the recent murder.
It was nothing less than the assassination of the Czar.
It was resolved, by whom and in what centre of the Empire I never knew,
to follow up the murder of Christian Tueski by the greater blow, and to
strike this with the utmost possible despatch: as a proof of the
desperate courage and daring of the Nihilists.
I was chosen to play one of the chief parts. I had no option to
refuse. There was no choice given me. The task was committed to me;
just as a command might have been given me by my military superior
officer. When I attempted to decline, I was given to understand that
refusal meant death.
I was thus placed in a position of cruel difficulty and I pondered with
close self-searching what I ought to do. Looking back I think I made a
blunder in not disclosing all I knew to the authorities, leaving them
to take what steps they pleased; but in forming my decision at the time
I was swayed by a number of considerations most difficult to weigh.
One of my chief reasons for holding my tongue was that as the plot
followed so soon after the Tueski murder--for the plans were all made
within a week--the fact that I knew so much of Nihilist plots at such a
time, would bring both Olga and myself under suspicion of having been
privy to the former one. In such a case everything I wished to win
would be jeopardised. A single breath of suspicion would have been
enough to sweep us both into a gaol; and once there, no one could say
when, if ever, we should come out; for the whole country was red-hot
against the Nihilists, and men of the highest rank and wealth were
rotting in gaol side by side with the most abject and destitute paupers.
I was also much concerned as to my supposed past. I knew that the old
Alexis was gravely compromised; but what he had actually done, I did
not know. If any old offences were raked up I should be certain to be
called to account for them now, while Olga would inevitably suffer with
me.
For those reasons I decided to hold my tongue and to seek my own means
for causing the infernal scheme to miss its aim. I reckoned that, as I
was to have a principal part assigned to me, I could by my own effort,
either through apparent stupidity or by wilful design, wreck the whole
project; and with this object I thought carefully over every detail of
it which was entrusted to me.
The scheme was ingenious and, save in one respect, simple enough. A
fortnight later the Emperor was to pay a visit to Moscow, and already
preparations had commenced for his reception. At one time it was
thought he would refuse to come because of the Tueski murder; but with
that unerring accuracy that always made me marvel, till I ascertained
the cause, the Nihilist leaders learnt the Imperial intentions before
they were known in some of even the closest official circles.
What the Czar decided to do was to have all the preparations continued
as though the original arrangements for the visit were to be carried
out; but at the last moment to make a change which would baffle any
plots. He meant to alter the arrangement of the train by which he
would travel: and this at the very last moment.
The object of this was, of course, to thwart any plot that might be
laid to attack the train in which he travelled, so that thus the
plotters might be discovered.
But the double cunning of the Nihilists was quite equal to this change:
and the plot was indeed exactly what the officials had anticipated--to
wreck the train in which the Czar travelled--and I think it was chosen
for the very reason of its apparent obviousness. Given precise
information of the Imperial movements and a little double cunning in
the plans, it was likely enough that the authorities would be
especially vulnerable in just that spot in which they believed they had
most effectively guarded themselves.
The official reasoning was that if the train in which the Czar was
publicly but erroneously believed to be travelling could pass safely,
then that in which His Majesty would actually be, would be sure to get
by without mishap. The Nihilist plans were laid in full knowledge of
the official theory.
A part of the line about ten miles from the city where the rails ran in
a dead straight course over a comparatively flat country for some five
or six miles was chosen for the attack; and it was chosen because it
was that which the authorities would the least suspect, since it was
most easy to watch and guard. A man standing at either end of the
long, flat, straight stretch could with a glass watch, not only the
line itself, but also the land adjoining the line. Of all the spots
the train would pass this was by far the unlikeliest to be selected for
any Nihilist attack.
The most prominent and conspicuous spot of all was that, moreover,
which was picked out for the actual attempt. At that particular point
a shallow dip in the fields caused the line to be embanked to a height
of some ten or twelve feet; and the key of the plan was to fix levers
to two of the rails so that they could be moved at the very last
moment, just when the train was within a few yards of them. In this
way the train would be turned off the metals and sent over the
embankment into the field.
The levers, worked by electric motive power, were of course out of
sight under the wooden sleepers: and the wires were trailed in tubes
down inside the embankment and away through field-drains to a house
more than half a mile distant from the line, where the operators were
to remain until after the "accident."
Personally, I did not dislike the scheme: because I thought I could see
several ways in which I could prevent any fatal outcome; should I have
to remain in the country long enough to compel me to take part in it.
It would be easy enough for me to appear to lose my head at the last
moment, for instance, and so bungle matters that the men who were to
kill the Emperor would be in fact prevented from approaching him.
But there was also in this a desperate personal risk to myself. I knew
that these men would be picked from among the most reckless and daring
spirits in the Empire; men suffering under the grossest personal wrongs
as well as motived by wild political fanaticism. To them the blood of
either friend or foe was as nothing if it stood in the way of what
their unbalanced minds deemed justice and right.
It was thus a perilous and slippery eminence to which I had been
thrust, and it increased infinitely the hazard of my course.
My thoughts returned to the idea of flight with redoubled incentive,
therefore; and a circumstance occurred which seemed to promise me some
help in this direction.
A letter came to me from "Hamylton Tregethner." Olga's brother had
escaped, as we knew, and had made his way to Paris. He was going on,
he said, to America as soon as he had enjoyed himself: and when he
found himself in New York, he purposed to change his name and
nationality once more and be a Pole.
"I have not had many adventures," he wrote; "nor do I seem to have met
many men who know me. But I had one encounter that was rather amusing.
I was at breakfast and saw a man staring hard at me from the other side
of the room. I thought he might be a friend, and so I did not look at
him. But he would not let his eyes move from me, and when I left the
table he followed and spoke to me. 'Hamylton, old man, I did not know
you at first. You're looking frightfully ill and altered. You're not
going to cut me.' This gave me a cue, though I did not understand all
he said, when he added something about 'on account of somebody's
conduct.' I did cut him, however; looked him hard in the face and
curling my lip as if in profound contempt, I turned on my heel. I had
the curiosity to ask afterwards who he was, and they gave me his name
as the Hon. Rupert Balestier. I suppose I know him, but I thought the
best way was not to speak. I did not shake him off, however: for that
night he saw me again just when I was speaking English to some other
men. I saw him listening as if he could not believe his ears; and as
soon as I was alone he came up and asked me who I was and what right I
had to masquerade as his old friend, Hamylton Tregethner. For answer I
gave him another stare and got away. Then I changed my hotel and am
going away from Paris for a few days. I do not intend to be bothered
by the man."
My first impression of this incident was that it boded further danger.
I knew Balestier. He was a man of great resolution and if he imagined
that anyone was masquerading in my name in Paris, he would think
nothing of rousing both the English and Russian Embassies; or of coming
on to Moscow himself to probe the thing to the bottom. He loved
mysteries; was most active, energetic, and enterprising; and nothing
would suit him better than to have imported into his rather purposeless
life some such task as a search for me half over Europe. He was quite
capable, too, of jumping to the conclusion that the man he had met had
murdered and was personating me; and in a belief of the kind he was
just the man to raise the hue and cry in every police office on the
Continent.
What the real Alexis called "speaking English" was of course bad enough
to brand him anywhere as an impostor, should he try to pass himself off
as an Englishman. Balestier had no doubt listened in amazement to the
strange jargon coming from lips that looked like mine; and the
extraordinary likeness and "my" peculiar conduct would quite complete
his perplexity.
Probably I should hear more of the matter; and this set me considering
whether I could not manage in some way to communicate with Balestier
and get him to help in smuggling Olga across the frontier. He would
revel in the work if I could only find him.
I turned to "Tregethner's" letter therefore to find the name of the
hotel, and to my infinite annoyance the fool had not mentioned it;
while his intention to run away from Paris and Balestier would cause
more delay. The fellow was not only a coward but an idiot as well; and
I could have kicked him liberally, if my foot would only have reached
from Moscow to Paris.
As it was, Balestier, with the best will in the world, would probably
be blundering about and plunging me still deeper into the mud, when he
not only could, but would, have given me valuable help if I could have
got at him to tell him what to do.
I felt like Tantalus, when I thought of it.