THE SPY
As Sonya came to the foot of the stairs Drexel saw Captain Nadson
start. “God!” he ejaculated joyously. “The woman that tried to kill
Berloff!”
He seized her shoulder roughly with his uninjured hand. “I did not
think we were going to get that prize, too! Well, my lady, you’ll not
escape this time!”
Drexel flared with the desire to rush down and throttle the burly
beast. One minute more, and he would be free of his promise to Sonya.
“Where is that foreigner?” continued the captain. “Isn’t he coming out?”
“He is wounded,” said Sonya.
“Here--men!” he roared. “Up with you and get him!”
As half a dozen of the gendarmes lunged in, Drexel saw Sonya deftly
knock over the hallway’s single lamp. It went out as it fell, and the
hall was darkness, save for the faint light that the snow caught from
the lurid blaze and threw in at the door. Drexel now had an inkling of
what was in Sonya’s mind: there was no chance for her, but for him
there was a fighting chance, and that chance she was striving to give
him.
As the men rushed up the stairway, swearing as they stumbled over dead
comrades, Drexel flattened himself against the wall. Though the fire
roared in the farther room, this room was black, and on this blackness
hung his chance. The men surged through the door. With high-beating
heart Drexel stepped forth and mixed among them.
They did not note that they had been joined by another man. They cursed
the blackness and sought their wounded prey by kicking about the floor.
None kicked more ruthlessly than Drexel.
“He’s not in here,” growled one of the men.
“Let him roast--that’s as good as killing,” said another. “I’m not
going to stay in here. It’s too hot and smoky for me.”
“And for me,” growled Drexel, coughing. “I’m going.”
He walked out and started down the stairs, the other complainant at his
heels. “One of you bring up a lantern,” was shouted after them.
Drexel thought of the story that lantern would reveal: the coatless
gendarme and his own discarded coat. “You do it,” he said to his
fellow, again coughing. “I’m choking.”
He hurried out into the open air. Ahead of him he saw the captain, and
he put his hand to his face as though to shield it from the scorching
heat.
“What’s the matter?” Nadson demanded.
Drexel coughed violently. “I can’t stand it,” he gasped in a muffled
voice.
“Well, my lady, why didn’t you bring your smelling salts?” the
captain demanded sarcastically, and proceeded to swear at him for a
weak-stomached coward. Then he gave Drexel a violent shove. “Get out of
here, and join the guard about the prisoners!”
Drexel hurried across the court and out the gateway. By the curb stood
two sleighs, in the front one Freeman, handcuffed, in the rear one
Sonya, and about them stood a solid circle of gendarmes, and beyond
these was a silent, unarmed crowd glowering helplessly on. Drexel
trembled with a fierce impulse to hurl himself upon the guard, but
reason told him that course would help Sonya none at all, and would
be the end of him, and the end of any aid he might give her should he
escape.
A roar from the blazing house informed him that his trick had been
discovered. He coughed. “I’m going to get a drink,” he remarked to
the guards, and walked quickly to the nearest corner. Fortunately the
street was empty; such people as were abroad were before the entrance
of the court. He held up the skirts of his long coat and sprang away at
his best speed. At the next corner he turned again, and at the next he
turned once more. Luckily here stood a sleigh waiting a fare.
Into this he leaped. “Quick--I’m after an escaped prisoner!” he cried
to the driver.
The man lashed his horse into a gallop, and at Drexel’s direction they
sped for the Neva, crossed it, and entered the broad Nevsky Prospect,
where they were quickly lost among the hundreds of darting sleighs.
Here Drexel dismissed his sleigh, took another and drove southward to
near the Marianskia Theatre. Here he again dismissed the sleigh, and
once more he took another and this time ordered himself driven into the
northeastern part of the city.
He felt that for the time at least he was safe against capture.
Now that the excitement of his escape was over, his whole being
was torn with the agony of Sonya’s loss. He saw her march, calmly
erect, down the stairway to her arrest, saw her sitting handcuffed
in the sleigh; saw her, in his imagination, meeting a dozen dreadful
fates, and, whatsoever they were, meeting them with the calm heroism
of Joan of Arc upon the pyre at Rouen. And into his agony shot the
breath-taking thought that she loved him, and he lived again that one
supreme moment when he had held her in her arms.
And then he recalled the cry of Freeman that they had been betrayed.
But for this traitor, she would now be free! But for him, their love
might have come to bliss!
He sprang suddenly aflame with wild rage against this unknown Judas.
Who could the traitor be? The desire to know, the desire for vengeance,
mastered him. He knew of but one person at liberty with whom he might
consult--Sabatoff; and he hurried away to his house.
Drexel knew that Sabatoff, the better to maintain his character of
an orthodox official, the better to keep suspicious eyes turned from
him, had surrounded himself with stupid servants who had an inherited
loyalty to the Czar. But he considered that, fugitive though he was,
his gendarme’s uniform would pass him by these hirelings, and so the
event proved.
He found the Keeper of the Seals making a pretense of examining some
documents of his department; whatever might happen, he had to play his
part. Sabatoff also believed that their plans had been betrayed by some
one of their number; only through a traitor could the Government have
learned such exact details. The man could not be Delwig, for he would
hardly betray himself; nor Freeman, nor Razoff, for they were under
arrest--and one by one Sabatoff counted off the others who had been
concerned in the plan. Unquestionably it had been none of them. Yet a
spy, a traitor, there certainly had been.
Drexel had told Sabatoff in detail all the happenings of the evening,
and Sabatoff now thought upon them for a long space. At length he
looked up.
“The lady who warned you,” he said slowly, “she loves you, does she
not?”
Drexel could not deny what he had plainly seen. “But what has that to
do with the matter?”
“Does it not explain why she warned you--and you alone?”
Drexel sprang up as Sabatoff’s meaning broke upon him. “You think she
is a spy?”
“I do.”
“But how did she learn our plans?” he cried. “And how do you explain
this?” And he told him of his escape with the countess from Berloff’s.
“I cannot explain that. And I do not know how she learned our plans.
Yet I do know she is a spy. She knew our plans, and also the plans of
the police; who but a spy could know both? It is plain she wished the
police to succeed in every detail except the capture of you. If she
were the revolutionist she claims to be, instead of trying to save you
alone, why did she not give warning to you all in that note she sent?”
“You are right! I never thought of that!”
He seized his cap and was gone. Not knowing what he purposed doing,
impelled by a blind, overmastering desire to make the person suffer who
had brought on the night’s disaster, he sped away to the countess. He
hastened up to her apartment and rang. She herself opened the door. Her
face was blanched and strained.
She started at the sight of him. “You! Thank God, you are safe!” she
cried--and there was a world of relief in her voice.
He walked in without a word.
“Tell me, how did you escape? No, no, not now!” Breathlessly she pushed
him toward the door. “Go, go! It’s dangerous for you here. Some one is
coming--”
She now noticed his face, black with awful accusation. She stepped back
with widened eyes.
“What is it?” she whispered.
“Oh, you damnable spy!”
The life went out of her almost as though his words had been a bullet
into her heart. She stared at him, silent, shrinking, stricken with
consternation.
“I see you cannot deny it!”
“It’s--false,” came from her dry lips.
“You lie!”
“It’s false! It’s false!”
“Of course you deny it. A woman would not hesitate at another lie,
whose trade it is to make friends and sell them to their death. God,
what shall I do to you? You woman Judas!”
It was less the fear of the fate she thought she saw in his rageful
face than the frantic desire to escape this awful accusation from the
man she loved, that prompted her to cry out desperately: “It’s false!
You’ve been deceived! I’m innocent!”
“You lie, I say. Your guilt is all over your face!” He thought of
Sonya, Sonya inspired by the holy desire to help her people out of
their bitter suffering--betrayed! His eyes blazed with a yet fiercer
wrath. “I should kill you as ruthlessly as you kill others.”
“I’m innocent! I’m innocent!” she gasped.
“And you have the effrontery to say that after what you did to-night!”
“What I--what I--” A dazed look came into her face. “What I did
to-night?”
“Yes, what you did to-night! Betrayed our plan, sold it to the
Government!”
“Is that your only accusation?”
“God--is it not enough!”
She gave a cry of relief. “I swear to you I’m innocent,” she cried
eagerly. “I swear to you I had nothing to do with to-night’s affair,
except to warn you. I swear it!”
“Swear it--but I won’t believe you!”
“I’m not the spy who betrayed you!” she cried frantically. “I’m not, I
tell you! I’m not!”
His fierce, hard face was unchanged. “And I tell you--you lie!”
There was a ring at the door. The reply to him died upon her lips. Her
face went ashen.
“Quick--quick!” she whispered. “It’s not safe for you here!” She
clutched his arm and pointed to a door hung with portières of crimson
silk. “Go through the hall, and out the rear entrance. No! Not that!”
Her face lighted with sudden desperate purpose. “Step behind the
portières there, and I will prove my innocence!”
“Prove? How?”
“I will show you the real spy! I will make him tell you all!”
He looked at her darkly. “Is this just a trick to escape, or--”
“S-s-sh! Not so loud!”
“Or is the real spy at the door?”
“The real spy is at the door.”
His face lit with a vengeful joy. “Then I stay here!”
The door-bell rang again.
“No, no, no!” she implored, frantically. “You do not understand your
danger! It may be your death!”
“It may be his!” said Drexel.
“Oh! Oh!” She twisted her hands in agony. “Are you armed?”
“I am not. But my hands are enough.”
“You must go!” she cried. “Don’t you see--to stay may be your death!
Please--please!” And she tried to push him toward the curtains.
“I shall stay. Open the door,” he ordered grimly.
“Oh, what shall I do, what shall I do?” Again she wrung her hands.
“Listen! It would be foolish to meet him now. Wait, you can see him
again--when you are armed. Besides, will you not give me a chance to
prove my innocence? Don’t you wish to know the truth? I will make him
tell everything--everything!”
He wavered. She saw it, and again tried to press him out.
“Go--please--please!”
He looked at her darkly, suspiciously. “I still half think this is only
a trick to escape.”
“I will not try to escape, I swear! And how can I escape, with you but
a yard away?”
The door-bell rang once more.
“Go! Go! Go!” she breathed frantically, and she pushed him half
resisting into the hall and pulled the curtains before him.
Drexel, watching through the parting of the portières, saw her stand a
moment, hand pressed against her heart, striving to calm her heaving
bosom and subdue the working passion of her face. Then she opened the
door.
“Here I am, Zenia--safe,” said the visitor.
Drexel started at the familiar voice. Then into the room came--Drexel
almost let out a cry--the terrorist, James Freeman.