IN THE DEAD OF NIGHT
On the second night after the death of the Czar Paul, it happened that
Wilfrid was sitting over a newspaper in his private room at the Hôtel
d’Angleterre, when a sound caused him to look up.
There, a few paces off, stood a young man, wrapped in a long cloak that
glistened with the moisture deposited, apparently, by a heavy fog. He
was perhaps not more than twenty years of age, singularly mild and
placid of countenance, and with light blue eyes marked by a somewhat
odd expression; they appeared to be looking straight at Wilfrid without
seeing him.
“Do I address Lord Courtenay?”
His voice was like his looks. He had a subdued air altogether.
“My name, sir,” replied Wilfrid, somewhat resenting this sudden
intrusion. “And yours?”
“Alexis Voronetz.”
“Voronetz, Voronetz,” repeated Wilfrid thoughtfully. “Any relative of a
certain lieutenant of that name?”
“His brother.”
“That cannot be.”
“Why not?”
“I understand that the man who killed him still lives.”
“I am blind,” answered the stranger with a sigh.
“Your pardon, good Alexis. I was not aware of that.”
Wilfrid guided the stranger to a chair, and offered him wine. “And what
does the brother of Lieutenant Voronetz want with me?” he asked, when the
other had set down his glass.
“My errand is a strange one. I am sent by a certain person, whose will
is that I should escort you to a place, not far hence, where your coming
is awaited.”
“What place?”
“I am forbidden to reveal its name. You will learn, if you come.”
“Without doubt,” smiled Wilfrid. “But why should I go to this person? If
he wish to see me, here I am, easily accessible.”
“It is impossible for——” he hesitated for a word—“for the person to visit
you.”
“Why not? Is he on a sick bed? Dying? In prison? Who is he?”
“I am on oath not to reveal the name of my principal. You are suspicious,
I see; and your suspicions are, perhaps, natural; but in the name of
God”—and here the speaker lifted his hand—“no hurt is intended you.”
Wilfrid knew that when a Muscovite swears by the name of God, he may
usually be trusted. Still——
“I don’t doubt your word, good Alexis, but I strongly suspect the
motives of a principal who clothes himself with such secrecy. It is now
close upon twelve o’clock. Why may I not go with you to-morrow, and in
daylight?”
“To-morrow will be too late.”
“Too late for what?”
“That is the answer I was told to give. It must be to-night or never.”
“You do not know, then, for what purpose I am wanted?”
Alexis signified that he did not.
Wilfrid mused. Was it safe to pay a visit at midnight to a strange
house for the purpose of meeting a man who declined to state beforehand
either his name or business? It was certain he had in the city one
enemy, Baranoff, if not more; and this errand of Alexis might be the
initial step for putting him into that enemy’s hand. A little reflection,
however, caused Wilfrid to dismiss this theory. Why should Baranoff
employ all this secrecy? If he wanted to remove an enemy he had simply to
sign an order for that enemy’s deportation to Siberia, and the thing was
done.
Then there occurred to him an idea that set his blood tingling with a
pleasurable excitement.
“So,” said he to Alexis, “you will not give me the name of _the lady_
that has sent you?”
It was a chance statement, but it found verification in Alexis’ sudden
look of surprise.
“I have not said that my principal is a lady.”
True, but he had shown a scrupulous avoidance of the masculine pronoun,
and hence Wilfrid’s conclusion. Who was this lady, if not the mysterious
duchess?
The atmosphere of peril in which she moved had doubtless left her no
other way of seeing him except at midnight and in secrecy.
She wanted him, and that at once: to-morrow would be too late! Was it to
give warning of some danger that threatened him, or her, or, possibly,
both?
“Had the lady any reason for selecting you as her messenger?”
“My brother’s death was mentioned, and I was told to be earnest in
persuading you to accompany me, for it might lead to the punishment of
his murderer.”
As Alexis spoke he set his sightless eyes appealingly upon Wilfrid. There
was something pathetic in the picture of this youth, whose infirmity
rendered him unable to avenge himself. The brutal slaughter of Lieutenant
Voronetz had filled Wilfrid with disgust, a feeling that, in a degree
scarcely less strong, included the Czar likewise, when that ruler,
instead of punishing the savage, gave him a place in the Ministry.
Wilfrid hesitated no longer when he heard that his going with Alexis
might bring about the downfall of Benningsen, against whom Pauline had
whispered certain dark hints. In what way this was to be brought about,
Wilfrid did not stop to inquire. Arming himself with a sword and a brace
of pistols, he declared himself ready for the journey.
Sallying forth from the hotel, Wilfrid found the city wrapped in a fog so
thick as to prevent him from seeing anything distant more than an arm’s
length.
No voices: no footsteps: no wheels: not the faintest sound anywhere.
There was something weird in the silence that hung over all. Petersburg
was like a city of the dead.
Wilfrid soon began to see that he was with a guide of peculiar
excellence; the real reason, perhaps, why he had been selected for the
trust. On a foggy night blindness is better than sight.
In walking down the staircase of the hotel Wilfrid had guided Alexis;
in the street it became the turn of Alexis to guide Wilfrid. Linking
Wilfrid’s arm within his own he walked forward with no more hesitation
than an ordinary man would have shown in traversing the street in broad
daylight. It was marvellous to mark the ease with which he steered his
course, now to right, and now to left. To him darkness was no darkness at
all.
Twenty minutes of silent walking, and then the two were brought to a
sudden standstill by a startling challenge. “Who goes there? Halt!”
Barely discernible, there loomed up out of the fog a figure clad in a
long grey coat with cross-belt, and armed with a bayoneted rifle.
Alexis whispered something that Wilfrid did not catch, and the soldier,
apparently satisfied, melted into the fog again.
“A sentinel, and a watchword,” thought Wilfrid. “Either a Government
building or an Imperial palace. I incline to the palace.”
The two went forward, treading upon a wooden flooring that gave forth a
hollow sound. Moved by curiosity, Wilfrid drew forth a coin and flung it
sideways in air. Its descent, as he had expected, was accompanied by a
slight splash.
“A bridge and water,” he thought. “The Fontanka Canal, or the moat round
the Michaelhof? The moat, I fancy.”
At the end of the supposed bridge they were challenged by a second
sentinel. Alexis whispered, and, as before, the two were permitted to
pass on, walking now over a pavement of flagstones.
“The courtyard of the Michaelhof,” murmured Wilfrid.
Presently Alexis stopped and put forth his hand; so did Wilfrid, who
found his fingers touching damp stone, doubtless the actual wall of
the palace itself. Turning to the right Alexis began to follow the
course of this wall, stopping at last before what seemed to be a small
arched entrance, and producing a key he applied it to the lock of an
iron-studded door. Unlocking this, Alexis passed within, followed by
Wilfrid. The place was as black as night.
“Make as little noise as possible,” said Alexis in a low tone.
He moved forward through the darkness, and Wilfrid followed in silence,
his hand and foot telling him that he was traversing a passage whose
walls and floor were of stone.
In a few moments they had come to a wide staircase of oak, dimly visible
in the faint light proceeding from some unseen point above.
This staircase gave access to a long and broad gallery, decorated with
tapestry and paintings. A few lamps, ranged at regular intervals along
the wall, did little more than make the darkness visible.
With the belief, right or wrong, that every corridor in a Czar’s palace
is tenanted by an armed sentinel, Wilfrid wondered to see this gallery
left unwatched, till it struck him that perhaps this absence of a guard
was due to some secret manœuvring on the part of those employing Alexis.
Half-way down this gallery Alexis paused, and, opening a door, said:—
“My orders are that you wait here.”
The “here” was a lofty apartment, very richly furnished, its recesses
piled high with books, showing that it served the purpose of a library. A
handsome reading lamp of bronze with a very bright flame stood upon the
central table.
But why it should be ordained that night must for ever rest upon this
apartment was a mystery to Wilfrid; yet such was the case. Windows there
were none, the spaces that had once let in daylight being now closed
with masonry, a walling-up that, judged by appearances, had taken place
but recently. Alexis offered no explanation of this singularity; perhaps,
being blind, he was not aware of it. Wilfrid could not help noticing
how odd was his manner at this moment; he seemed to be under a spell of
nervousness, if not of actual fear, his eyes being riveted upon a certain
door at the far end of the apartment, as if, blind though he was, he
could see something that the other could not see. Turning away, he said:—
“I must leave you for a time. I go to announce your arrival.”
With this he stepped from the apartment, closing the door behind him.
Too much excited to spend the interval in sitting down, Wilfrid paced to
and fro for a few minutes.
Suddenly, he stopped short in his walk, and, without knowing why, shot
a suspicious glance at the distant door. What lay on the other side of
it he did not know, but he felt a sense of satisfaction in having come
equipped with sword and pistols.
He resumed his pacing, though more slowly now, and even when his back was
turned to the door, he moved, as a Spaniard would say, with his beard
upon his shoulder.
That door haunted him!
It was in vain that he tried to divert his mind from it by examining the
objects of art contained in the room: a rectangle of wood, seven feet by
three, proved a greater attraction than oriental alabaster or porphyry
vases. Many minutes had now passed, yet Wilfrid still remained the only
person in the apartment.
Growing impatient at this long delay he went to the door by which he had
entered, and peeped out into the gallery.
He could not see anybody, nor could he hear the sound of coming
footsteps. No sound at all, far or near.
“Truly, they are quiet people in the Michaelhof,” muttered Wilfrid, as he
closed the door again.
The midnight hour and the deadly silence, the mysterious character of
this chamber, with its windows sealed against the light of day, but
above all, the strange door, began to tell upon Wilfrid’s nerves.
Was it fancy merely, or did he catch a glimpse of it in the act of
closing, just as he was withdrawing his gaze from the gallery?
The more he dwelt upon Alexis’ oddity of manner, the stronger became his
suspicion that the door gave access to something strange, something that
was a matter of fear to Alexis.
If the mystery were one to be solved merely by opening the door, then
Wilfrid would solve it; if the door were locked, his curiosity would, of
course, be baffled; even his boldness would hardly proceed to the length
of breaking the lock of a door belonging to the Czar’s palace.
Lifting the lamp, the only one in the apartment, from the table, Wilfrid,
albeit somewhat slowly, went forward, fancying as he did so that he saw
the door vibrate, an illusion due, perhaps, to the oscillating lamp.
Reaching the door he stood there for a time, hesitating, for all his
boldness. He held his ear close to the panels, but failed to detect
either sound or movement; he applied his eye to the keyhole; darkness was
upon the other side.
He drew his sword as a precaution against he knew not what. As it is
somewhat difficult for a man holding an object in each hand to turn the
knob of a door, Wilfrid resolved to place the lamp on the floor in such
a position that its rays would illumine the room beyond as soon as he
should have swung the door open.
As he stooped to lower the lamp, his eye was caught by some dark stains,
varying in shape and size. He raised the lamp again, and looked round
about. The stains were nowhere else, only there, just around the door,
and along one side of the wall at the foot of the arras.
Something had happened there, and it was the knowledge of that event that
had put fear upon the mind of Alexis.
Setting the lamp upon the floor, Wilfrid rose to his full height, and
placing his fingers upon the knob turned it, and at the same time with a
push of his foot he sent the door flying wide.
The next moment a cry of vexation broke from him, as he realised when too
late his want of foresight.
The sudden opening of the door had produced an in-draught of air
sufficiently strong to extinguish the flame of the lamp before he could
catch even the briefest glimpse of the chamber. Being without flint and
steel he was unable to rekindle the flame.
As a precaution against being transfixed by hostile blades Wilfrid, on
opening the door, had recoiled a few steps, and he now stood with his
sword on guard, half-expecting to be attacked, or at the least to be
addressed, by some unseen foe. There was neither movement nor speech;
the chamber was soundless, its darkness seeming to be not the ordinary
darkness of night, but something far blacker, an effect due, Wilfrid
intuitively felt, to the fact that the windows of this place, too, were
walled up.
Now, while he was hesitating whether to go forward a few paces, just to
ascertain whether this supposed chamber might not be a corridor, his
ear was startled by the sound of something coming through the doorway,
something moving low down, a slow, gliding rustle along the floor at the
foot of the wall. Wilfrid did not doubt that some one was stealing into
the chamber with some deadly design against him, else why this secret and
voiceless action?
Wilfrid put no question; he gave no warning.
Swift as the electric flash his sword descended edgewise upon the quarter
whence came the sound, and he had the grim satisfaction of knowing that
he had not struck in vain. His sense of feeling told him that the edge of
the blade had not only cut the tapestry, but had also passed through some
fleshy obstacle, severing it in twain.
But the strangeness of the thing!—the victim had uttered no cry!
A sensation, such as he had never before known, passed over Wilfrid.
For a moment he hesitated; then, impelled almost against his will, he
stooped, not neglecting, however, to keep on guard against a possible
attack, and, feeling with his left hand in the place where his blade
had struck, he grasped something that he immediately relinquished on
realising what it was.
_A human hand!_
And the man thus maimed had endured the pain without a groan! an apathy
so utterly opposed to human nature that Wilfrid recoiled with an eerie
thrill.
And there he stood, staring at the place where he knew the hand to be,
fancying he could see it looking ghastly white through the darkness. If
that, outlined beside it, were really a human shape, and not merely a
figure woven upon the tapestry, there could be but one solution of the
mystery. The victim must be a dumb man, belonging perhaps to the class of
those tongueless eunuchs often to be found in the seraglios of the East,
though seldom, if ever, in the palace of a Czar.
Was he writhing in silent agony?
Wilfrid listened for any sound indicative of human presence. But there
was no movement; there was not even a breath audible in the place where
the handless man should be.
Recovering from his spell of fear, Wilfrid came slowly forward and
passed the point of his sword along the foot of the wainscotting without
lighting upon the owner of the hand. What had become of him? It was
impossible to believe that the man, on receiving the sword-stroke, had
risen to his feet and glided off without a sound. Where, then——?
Once more Wilfrid stooped, and, repressing the natural repugnance
engendered by such a task, he began to search for the severed hand, which
he was not long in finding. His gloved fingers could not tell whether
the hand were warm or cold, but a touch of the mutilated member against
his cheek told him that it was icy-cold. When held to his nostrils, it
emitted a decaying odour, thus proving that some hours, if not some days,
must have elapsed since its severance from the parent limb.
It had been lying near the door at the foot of the wall, hidden, perhaps,
by the fringe of tapestry, and Wilfrid, when aiming the downward stroke
of his imaginary foe, had, by a singular chance, lighted upon this
dead hand, the keen edge of his blade slicing a part of the wrist. The
sound mistaken by him for a stealthy human movement had perhaps been
nothing more than the return of a hungry rat towards a meal that had been
disturbed by the entrance of himself and Alexis.
Resisting the temptation to fling the ghastly relic from him, Wilfrid
laid it upon the table, with the words:—
“This may have been the hand of a brave man.”
He had just closed the door of the supposed inner chamber and restored
the lamp to its place, when his ear caught the sound of footsteps in the
gallery.
“Friends or foes?” he muttered, keeping the table between himself and the
door, and laying his hand upon his sword. His eyes, so long in darkness,
blinked with a sudden radiance, as the door opened.
“In the dark!” said a sweet voice in a tone expressive of reproachful
surprise. “Did you leave Lord Courtenay here without a light?”
“Your Highness, no,” replied Alexis.
The voice of the first speaker sent a thrill to Wilfrid’s heart, for it
was the voice of the lady he was longing to meet.
Graceful in figure, and stately in bearing, she moved forward with
all the dignity of an Imperial princess. In Wilfrid’s eyes she seemed
more beautiful than ever, attired as she was in a clinging robe of the
richest silk, her face and hair framed in a dainty lace wrap. Radiant
and youthful, what did she want in a chamber so grim with suggestions
of tragedy? He was glad to note that at that moment the dead hand lay
in shadow. Beside the Duchess on her right walked Alexis, as faithful
a servitor as his blindness would permit; in the rear, and carrying a
small silver lamp that shed a soft glow around, came a third person, whom
Wilfrid took to be a lady-in-waiting.
“Remain here,” said the Duchess, addressing her two attendants, and
with that she moved forward towards Wilfrid. Her reason for keeping her
attendants in the room was obvious. When a youthful duchess holds an
interview with a man in the dead of night it is well to have a witness
by to prove that such meeting is all that it should be.
The Duchess’s first question was personal, and to the point.
“Lord Courtenay, have you learned yet who I am?”
“Am I wrong in concluding that you are a Grand Duchess?”
She hesitated, an odd smile on her lips.
“I was—once.”
“Once? Yet your attendant has called you Highness!”
“Alexis forgets that——” And then she stopped. “No matter. Call me by that
title. ’Twill do as well as any other.”
A duchess no longer! What did she mean? Had the jealous Alexander
deprived her of the title conferred by Paul? _That_ he could do, but
he could not take away her Imperial descent, nor the regal beauty that
accompanied it. It was clear that, so far as Wilfrid was concerned, she
wished still to remain _incognita_.
“Were you,” said the Duchess—to call her still by that name—“were you
expecting to see me to-night, when you accompanied Alexis?”
“Presumptuous of me, perhaps,” smiled Wilfrid, “but I was not without
hope that the summons _might_ have come from you.”
It was with a certain touch of hauteur in her manner that the Duchess
replied:—
“Learn, then, that it was not _I_ who called you to this
meeting.”—Wilfrid’s hopes fell.—“Not till an hour ago was it told me
that you had been sent for.” Wilfrid’s hopes rose. Her coming to see him
immediately on hearing of his arrival was proof that she took _some_
interest in his fate. “Is it likely,” she continued gravely, and speaking
more as if to herself than to him, “that I should invite you to a meeting
like this, when death would be your lot should you be seen here by my
enemies?”
Her enemies? Wilfrid wished he could have them all in line and fight with
them, one by one, from sunrise to sunset, with due intervals for rest
and refreshment. He’d have left none alive!
“Then, since you did not send for me, will your Highness condescend to
tell me who did?”
“The Empress.”
“Elizavetta?” asked Wilfrid, naming the youthful wife of Alexander.
“No, Paul’s widow. The Dowager Empress, I should have said. She was
desirous of seeing you in person, but circumstances preventing her, I act
as her ambassadress.”
Wilfrid breathed a silent benison on the head of the ex-Czarina for her
choice of ambassadress.
“And what is the will of the Empress with me?”
“To do a work that—but your question will best be answered in that room,”
replied the Duchess, pointing to the door of the mysterious chamber.
“Countess, bring the light.”