THE MAN BEHIND THE CURTAINS
Freeman laid off his overcoat, and stood before her with triumph and
exultation in his dark eyes.
“Well--it’s all over,” he whispered. “A success--a tremendous success!”
“Tell me all about it.”
He glanced toward the portières behind which Drexel stood. “You are
alone? There are no servants about?”
“I had sent them to bed before you telephoned you were coming.”
“What’s that noise overhead?”
“The people who live up there are having a party.”
He now noticed her pallor. “How white you are, Zenia!”
“Am I? I suppose it’s the suspense of waiting to hear how things came
out.”
“I had to see Berloff first, you know, before I could come to you.”
“You have seen him then?”
“No. I went to him to report, but he was not in. I’m going back in an
hour.”
They sat down, the countess turning her chair so that she faced the
curtains, he with his back to them.
“How did you manage to escape?” she asked.
“Captain Nadson saw to that.”
“But your being there at the time of the arrest was an unnecessary
risk, a very great risk.”
“It is by taking big risks that you win big prizes! I thought that in
the excitement of the moment they might let something drop that would
be of great importance.”
“But the danger from the revolutionists. If they had suspected--”
“I played my part so well they couldn’t suspect! I killed three or four
gendarmes myself. They’re cheap. Berloff tells me to shoot a few to
keep up my reputation.”
He leaned toward her and his eyes glistened. “I tell you, Zenia, the
risk was worth while!”
“Then you learned something?”
“Did I? Listen. I learned that Borodin is Borski, and that the young
woman arrested with me is the one who shot at Berloff. But that is not
the best!”
“No?”
“I won’t tell you what it is now; Prince Berloff may wish it kept an
absolute secret for a while. But it is something he’ll be glad to know.
And he will pay well for it, too! It will be our fortune, Zenia, or I
miss my guess!”
Only the countess’s self-control enabled her to restrain a cry. For the
curtains had parted, and Drexel, very white, had stepped noiselessly
out.
As it was she went suddenly pale. “What’s the matter?” queried Freeman.
There was an outburst of merriment in the apartment overhead. Drexel
paused, considered, then slipped noiselessly back.
She regained her composure. “Nothing--just a thought,” she returned.
“And how about Mr. Drexel?”
“I failed there--temporarily,” Freeman continued. “In the beginning,
to make sure of him, I accused him of being a traitor, and was on the
point of shooting him myself. But I happened to think that if it got
out that I had killed him, it might queer me among the revolutionists
and might later make living in America uncomfortable. Besides, I was
sure Nadson would get him.”
“And Nadson did not?”
“He let him escape. I suppose Berloff will be mad. Berloff had it
all arranged that Drexel’s death was not to leak out till after the
marriage; the Howards were to suppose he was merely detained in the
South.”
“And The White One, and the others?”
“All safe in Peter and Paul, as I telephoned you. And as for Drexel,
I’ll get him later--sure. He doesn’t suspect me--we’re certain to meet
sometime soon--and then!”
The countess led him on with questions, asked for the sake of the man
behind the portières. For ten years, Drexel learned by fitting together
fragments of Freeman’s answers, Freeman had been a Russian spy. Most of
the time he had been in New York, his duty there having been to pose as
an active sympathizer with political refugees, gain their confidence,
and forward to the Russian Government information on which their
comrades in Russia could be discovered and arrested. His cleverness had
caused him to be brought to Russia where he had been able to deliver
into the Government’s hands scores of leading men and women. Even those
of the revolutionists who opposed his violent methods had no doubt
of his sincerity, so wonderfully daring was he, and so wonderfully
successful had been his terroristic plots. They did not guess that
the Government for its private reasons desired to get rid of these
officials whom Freeman slew, and by secretly aiding Freeman’s terrorism
had not only achieved this immediate purpose but had reinforced the
position among the revolutionists of its best spy.
That scene between Freeman and Prince Berloff in the Hotel Europe had
been merely a bit of pre-arranged play-acting. The pair knew that the
Central Committee was aware of Berloff’s office, and they feared that
the Committee was beginning to suspect Freeman of secret relations with
the prince; and this public display of hostility had been to throw
dust into the eyes of incipient suspicion.
Freeman spoke exultantly of the rewards that were as good as in his
hands. “Fifty thousand from the Government for the arrest of The White
One and the others; another fifty at least from Berloff’s own pocket
for what I have to tell him; fifty for Drexel, whom I’ll not let slip
again. Zenia, never before has a spy made such a haul as this!”
“Never before was there such a clever spy.”
“We’re a pair, you and I! This business won’t last forever; but there
are plenty of other things in which wits and beauty count. When we’re
married, we’ll be a match for the world--my Zenia!”
“Let’s not speak of that now,” she said nervously. She gave an
apprehensive look at the curtains.
He caught the look. “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing,” she said, “nothing.”
He glanced about at the curtains, then turned back.
“Yes, we’ll be a match for the world,” he went on. “Ah, but you are
a clever one, my dear! Only once have you ever failed. And I don’t
understand yet how the other night out at Berloff’s you let Drexel get
away from you. But with us both upon the case--”
She went suddenly white. “Let’s speak of other things,” she broke in.
He caught a second nervous glance at the portières. “Is there something
wrong with those curtains?” he said, and he quickly rose and made for
them, his hand instinctively reaching for his pistol.
“Don’t! Don’t!” she cried, and she sprang forward to catch his arm.
But already he had parted the curtains. He saw no one and passed on
into the hall, and the curtains closed behind him. Pallid, breathless,
the countess awaited the sudden uproar of the struggle.
But after a minute Freeman reappeared.
“There was no one?” she asked.
“No one. But what made you try to stop me from going in?”
“Just nerves,” she said.
They sat down and Freeman had begun to run on about the fortune that
was almost theirs, when there was a ring. The countess opened the door.
Into the room walked Drexel.
A baleful exultation leaped into Freeman’s dark face. But his impulse
to shoot Drexel was instantly checked by the realization that the shot
would bring the merry-makers overhead trooping down as witnesses to his
deed.
“Why, hello!” he cried holding out his hand. “How did you escape? I’m
mighty glad to see you!”
“And I to see you,” said Drexel quietly.
He avoided the outstretched hand by turning to the countess. “I came to
tell you of our disaster. But Mr. Freeman must have told you.”
“Yes,” she said. She was very white, and looked with sickening dread
from man to man.
“Then I will not stay. The police are after me, and I must get into
hiding.”
“Wait, I’ll go with you,” Freeman eagerly put in. “I was just leaving,
and I want to talk over some plans for retrieving our loss.”
Drexel had counted on just this offer when he had decided it would be
safest not to try to take his vengeance here. But he did not show his
satisfaction.
“Very well. Come on.”
Freeman slipped on his overcoat, and as he did so he swiftly
transferred his pistol to the overcoat’s outer pocket. “I’m ready.
Good-night, countess.”
She knew that Freeman was armed, that Drexel had but his bare hands.
“Don’t go yet, Mr. Drexel,” she said, trying to speak calmly.
“Thank you. But I must,” he returned.
She laid a hand upon his arm. It seemed a casual touch, but the fingers
gripped him tensely, warningly, with wild appeal.
“But I want to hear your story of the affair. Please stay.”
“Do not think me rude, countess. But as Mr. Freeman says, we have some
things to talk over. So good-night.”
She saw the changeless determination beneath his apparent calm. There
was nothing more that she could say. He knew what he was walking into,
and any further warning to him would be but a warning to Freeman.
“Good-night,” she breathed. And clinging to a chair-back, her face
ghastly, she watched the two go out.
“I have a sleigh waiting below,” said Freeman as they went down. “I
wanted to be unobserved, so I left the driver behind. We can ride about
and talk. Let’s go through the State Garden; there’ll be no danger of
our being overheard there.”
Drexel knew well why Freeman suggested that lonely park, sure to be
deserted at this midnight hour. But he acquiesced, for it suited his
own purpose no less than Freeman’s.
They got into the little backless sleigh, Freeman took the reins in
his left hand and slipped his ungloved right into his overcoat pocket.
The horse was of that big, black, powerful breed the rich of Russia
have developed for carriage service. At Freeman’s word he sprang away
at a swift trot, and they sped along the broad Fontanka Canal, Drexel
listening to a clever fabrication of Freeman’s escape. He kept the tail
of his eye on Freeman’s pocketed right hand, for he knew what that hand
clutched, and held himself in tense readiness for that hand’s first
swift, hostile move.
They entered the park--broad, white, with the hush of midnight brooding
upon it. Drexel’s eye never left that right hand, which he knew would
now dart out at any moment.
He preferred to choose the moment himself. He slipped an arm behind
Freeman’s back as if to support himself.
“Freeman,” he said in the same quiet tone in which he had thus far
spoken, “there is one thing that I know which I have not yet told you.”
“What is that?”
His voice rang out with sudden fierceness. “That you are the traitor
who sold us out!” Instantly he pinned Freeman’s arms to his sides in
a tight embrace, rendering helpless, as he thought, that pistol hand.
“And now you are going to pay for it!”
Freeman must have been startled, but he was not the man to lose a
second. He dropped the reins, twisted his body like a snake in the
powerful grip that held him, bringing his right side toward Drexel.
“Am I?” he cried with a sardonic laugh. And without trying to draw out
his hand, he fired through the pocket.
The bullet missed, but at the shot the big black snorted and sprang
away at a frenzied gallop. Drexel gave Freeman no chance for a second
shot. He loosed his embrace and seized Freeman’s right wrist. The
pistol came out and instantly the four hands were struggling over
it--Freeman’s to aim it for but a moment, Drexel’s to wrench it free.
Drexel had known that the man was stronger than he seemed, but he had
not guessed that that lean body possessed such steely strength as it
now revealed. Each time he tried a twist or a trick, Freeman matched
it, and laughed tauntingly at his failure. So, swaying about in the
tiny sleigh, each struggling for an instant’s possession of that which
meant the other’s death, they dashed past snow-shrouded shrubbery, past
statues done up in straw to ward off the marble-chipping cold--out of
the park--down an incline and out upon the frozen river. And still they
struggled, and still the big black galloped madly over the ice.
Drexel saw that his gaining the pistol was doubtful, and he determined
that at least Freeman should have no advantage from it. As they
struggled he cautiously shifted his grip on the pistol till his
forefinger slipped into the trigger guard. As swiftly as his finger
could work, he six times pulled the trigger, and six times harmless
fire spurted toward the stars. The seventh time he pulled there was
only a sharp click that announced the pistol to be empty.
Instantly he dropped the weapon and drove his right fist into Freeman’s
face. The blow unbalanced Freeman; he went reeling backward from the
sleigh, dragging Drexel with him, and the horse dashed away through the
night.
Locked together, the two fell heavily upon the ice and rolled over and
over. In the same moment that Drexel had struck Freeman with his right,
his left had darted out and clutched the spy’s black-bearded throat;
and now as they tumbled and twisted about, his hand held on with
savage, deathlustful grip, and his fist drove again and again into the
spy’s face. Freeman beat the wrist of the hand at his throat between
hammer-like fists, but the hand only bit the deeper.
“You’ll never play Judas again!” Drexel gloatingly gasped into the
other’s face, which gleamed defiantly back into his. Somehow he
realized that they lay fighting in the shadow of Saints Peter and Paul,
where this man had sent Sonya. He drove in his fists more fiercely.
Freeman’s struggles grew weaker, yet he spoke not a word for mercy;
whatever he was, he knew how to die game. Then the struggling ceased,
and the body lay limp. Still Drexel’s vengeance-mad fists drove home.
He had not noticed that, upon the shots, several figures had started
running from the banks across the ice. So he was now startled when a
rough voice called out, “Stop! What are you doing?” and when a hand
fell upon his shoulder.
He rose from the motionless body, and saw that he was surrounded by
policemen. He was giving himself up for lost, when the policeman, who
had spoken, said:
“Oh, I see you are a gendarme.”
Drexel caught at the chance. “Yes,” he panted. “I had arrested him, and
he tried to shoot me. He’s a political.”
“An important one?”
A bold idea came to Drexel. “You heard of Captain Nadson’s great arrest
to-night?”
They had; in fact they had all been ordered to be on the watch for a
man who had escaped from Nadson--a foreigner.
“That’s the very man,” said Drexel.
“Was he indeed!” they exclaimed. One stooped and put his ear to
Freeman’s chest.
“Is he dead?” asked Drexel.
“No.”
A mighty pang of regret went through him.
“He’ll likely come to in a few minutes,” added the policeman.
Drexel thought quickly. If Freeman revived, this would be no company
for him. “Will you take charge of him, and take him to headquarters?”
he asked. “I want to catch my horse.”
They were proud to lead to their chief this prize prisoner. Tired as he
was, Drexel set off at a swift run in the direction taken by the big
black. He sped over the ice till he knew the night blotted him out of
the policemen’s vision, then he made for the bank and doubled about in
obscure streets.
Now that his fury was spent, the great agony of his love swept into
him; and obeying its direction, he made his way among government
buildings and palaces, and came out again beside the river and stood
leaning upon its granite wall. Behind him was the hushed mansion of the
Valenkos. He gazed up at the dim-lighted window where watch was being
kept over the sick princess--her for whom all noble St. Petersburg was
anxiously concerned. If St. Petersburg only knew! Then he cast his
eye across the river to where, in the moonlight, like some fearsome,
man-consuming monster of tradition, lay the long, low, black shape that
was the Fortress of Peter and Paul; wherein, for close upon two hundred
years, men and women distasteful to the Czars had been tortured,
murdered, driven mad--wherein this night, in some dark and soundless
dungeon, lay the woman of his love, awaiting on the morrow who knew
what?