“A SPY WITHIN THE GATE.”
General Stefanovitch, the deputy-governor of Kronstadt, entered his
library every morning at half-past eight precisely that he might kiss
his daughters upon the cheek and wish their governess “good-day.” The
years brought no variation of the ceremony; the same words were
spoken, the same compliments passed. When the General had unusual
leisure, he devoted some moments of it to a measured flirtation with
the young lady who taught his children. When he had no leisure, he
gave her a haunting leer or kissed the tips of his fingers to her if
his daughters were not looking.
“Bon jour, Varia.”
“Bon jour, cher papa.”
“Et tu, Rina?”
“Bien, cher papa.”
Marian Best, the General’s governess in the year 1895, always said
that when the old soldier laughed the top of his head threatened to
come off like the half of an egg. But this alarming effect was rather
the result of his weakness for painted eyebrows than of any deficiency
of head or skull. Sixty years of life had not satisfied his vanity. A
glance from a woman’s eyes could still release the flow of compliment
and childish affectation. Marian said that he seemed at such moments
to be treading upon hot plates. His shrivelled body swelled until his
close-laced stays were strained to bursting point; he bowed
continually, and laid upon his breast a hand blue and long and almost
fleshless. She dreaded those mornings when he was not busy; it was a
relief to her when she heard his sword clanging in the stone passage
of the house or saw old Ivan running for his great boots.
“Ah, you must learn our language,” he would say often; “you must learn
the verb ‘to lofe.’ Some day we will have the lesson by ourselves,
mademoiselle. You shall repeat the little word after me until you are
perfect. Ho, ho, ho! Will you not have me for your master, Meess Best?
Shall I not teach well, hein?”
“Cher papa, qu’est-ce que tu dis à mademoiselle?”
“Rien, ma chère, rien du tout.”
Sometimes, when “the Dolls” sat staring with inquiring eyes at his
amatory contortions or strange pursuits of nimbleness, he would
entertain for them anything but a father’s love. He could not caper as
he would with the children for his audience. The snatched whisper or
stolen leer was not satisfying. He tasted the dry bones of flirtation
when he was hungering for the baked meats. It was difficult to believe
that this perfumed old dandy, whose head was like a shining ball of
mahogany, and whose eyebrows were an uncertain quantity, was the
master of Kronstadt and of her garrison, the sentinel of the mighty
Russian Empire, the keeper of the gate and of the freedom of millions.
Yet Russia knew no more faithful servant; there was no more devoted
soldier of the Czar in all the kingdom; no man whose pride in the
citadel of the gate was so enduring and ever-present. General
Stefanovitch lived for his work; the gaunt and bare Governor’s house
upon the north shore of the island was a palace for him; he desired no
other gardens but the garden of fort and bastion, of shallowing sea
and impassable rampart. His world lay in that calcareous, barren
island which God had set in the Gulf of Finland for the protection of
Russia. His vanities, his personal “scenery and effects,” as Marian
Best described them, were trifles of his leisure. He forgot them in an
instant when Kronstadt was named. She was all to him--the mighty
tablet upon which his life’s work was recorded.
Thus it befell that the moments when he could employ himself with
amatory recreations were few. The half of an hour with his children in
the morning, a few words to them at night, sufficed for the proper
performance of the domestic _rôle_. At other times he was the
martinet, the hundred-eyed guardian of the gate, the precise soldier
who ruled with an ungloved hand of iron. Men feared his look; the
dungeons of the fortress echoed with the groans of those upon whom the
lash of his displeasure had fallen; the lightest breath of his
suspicion, blowing upon any who served him, withered up the blossoms
of that man’s fortune. They saw he was a just man, but one who knew
not forgiveness.
Nine o’clock in the morning was the hour which found the General at
his writing-desk in the private cabinet of the Governor’s house.
Neither fast nor feast gave grace to those who awaited him. He would
enter the room as the clock struck; the echoes of the bell would not
have died away before the grim Colonel Bonzo, the second in command,
would have saluted and laid the report before him. Upon the morning
which followed carnival, the young officers, who had not been to bed,
declared his punctuality immoral. No rose gathered at the hour of the
dew was fresher than Nikolai Stefanovitch when he saluted the Colonel
as the clock struck nine. Painted, powdered, prim--he bowed to those
who awaited him with the inflexible courtesy of an automaton. The eyes
which had just beamed upon Marian Best, as they had beamed upon eight
governesses during the past five years, were now cold and steely and
devouring. A great silence fell upon those in the ante-room when he
passed through. Even the iron-framed Bonzo stiffened at his approach.
“Good morning, Colonel. You have the papers?”
“Here, my General.”
General Stefanovitch fixed his eyeglass and began to peruse the bulky
document. He had read but a few lines when a subdued exclamation and a
shuffling of feet again drew his attention to his subordinate. Such a
breach of the discipline of silence was not to be endured; a sudden
flight of the General’s eyebrows, which seemed to run up to the top of
his head, marked his displeasure and impatience.
“You spoke, Colonel?” he asked.
“I wished to speak, my General.”
“Now, when I read the despatches?”
“If you please, my General.”
General Stefanovitch let his glass fall and deliberately rolled up the
report. Such an interruption had not been known during the twenty
years he had spent at Kronstadt. It remained for Bonzo to justify
himself.
“Well, Colonel?”
“It is this, my General: the plan of Battery No. 3 was put into the
hands of the English Government a week ago.”
Colonel Bonzo stood like a statue when the words were spoken. The
terrible news had been the burden of his night; he had heard it, and
yet twelve hours had passed before he had dared to speak. Now the deed
was done and the blow would fall--the blow of anger, of recrimination,
it might be of punishment.
Five minutes, it may be, passed before General Stefanovitch found his
tongue. During that time he seemed outwardly to be unconscious of the
place or the word, but in reality his mind was seeking to and fro for
the first link of the chain which reason must forge for him. To
Bonzo’s surprise no martinet answered him. The voice was low and in
command; he did not speak in anger.
“Where does this news come from?”
“By telegram last night--from the Prince.”
“How is it that I did not hear of this before?”
Bonzo half raised his hands as though in a gesture of excuse.
“There was carnival upon the ice, my General.”
“Yes----?”
“And when I returned at midnight, and you were still down there, I did
not think you would wish it.”
He stood stammering and stuttering, but the other, awakened by all the
impulses of duty, smote the table with his fist until the very glass
in the windows of the room was shaken.
“Not wish it?--I--whose honour is at stake. By heaven, Colonel Bonzo,
what do you mean?”
The Colonel’s heart quaked, but he was glad that the moment had come.
He had waited for this, and now he took courage.
“I mean, my General, that we have first to ascertain if the plan of
Battery 3, which the English Government is said to possess, is the
correct plan or no. These English would give much for the secret of
Kronstadt. Is it not possible that a part of the ten thousand pounds
they offer to him who shall help them has gone into the pocket of an
impostor? I say that it is possible. I say that it is the only
explication. The Prince is deceived; the plan is a forgery. We shall
laugh in our sleeves by-and-bye, and sell the people in London more
secrets. It will keep their tongues still and help us to hang the
spies. Oh! be assured, my General, if there is any man in the city who
has betrayed us, many hours shall not pass before we lay our hands
upon him.”
The Colonel spoke with great earnestness; there was a light of anger
and of determination in his eyes; his great hands trembled with his
desire to be acting. Like his master, the island fortress was to him a
sacred citadel; his life, his work lay there; his honour was offered
upon that altar of granite and of steel. The two men had laboured side
by side for twenty years; they were more than friends, they were
brothers in a great and insurpassable trust. And now a common peril
was before them both. They could not wholly realise it; they dare not
tell themselves that a spy was within the gate; they were ready to be
deceived if it were only for a day.
“I was a fool not to think of it at the first,” said Stefanovitch,
taking heart as the other spoke. “If they have a plan of Battery 3 in
London, it is not our plan. I will tell the Prince so to-day. He
should not have been deceived like that. He should not charge the
fidelity of those who have grown old in this service. We will see to
it that he is answered, Bonzo. You shall make it your business to draw
up our case, if that be necessary. Why does he not suggest at the same
time that these English have a plan of my house----”
“Or of heaven?” said the Colonel bluntly. “They are as likely to get
it as the drawings of Battery 3. And why of Battery 3, my General? Why
not of Fort Peter, of Alexander, of Menzikoff? They have sought these
things long enough. Why should one be taken and the other left? Are
they children at Petersburg that they believe any tale which is told
them in London? Do they think that we sleep while spies are busy on
our ramparts? Oh, it is a jest, Nikolai, a jest, and we should be the
first to laugh at it.”
Colonel Bonzo’s laugh had grown rusted from long disuse, so that when
he asked help of it the answer was loud and grating like the bark of a
dog. His earnestness had led him to address Stefanovitch in the
familiar style which the men assumed when no janissaries of office
overheard them, and this familiarity was not resented.
“You say well,” replied the General, fixing his glass for the first
time since he had heard the tidings; “the Prince jests with us and we
shall answer him with another jest; it will be a list of all the
people who have entered Battery 3 since it was built. He shall then
tell us who is the spy, and we shall know what to do. Eh, Colonel, we
shall know what to do? Then let Captain Paul come to me.”
Paul Zassulic had gone to bed at four o’clock in the morning. During
two short hours he had dreamed of Marian Best--of a garden of eternal
summer of which she was mistress. But when six o’clock struck and
twenty trumpets sounded the reveille from the ramparts, he had dragged
himself wearily from his couch and turned gloomily to his monotonous
work in the fortress. A roseate flush of the lagging sun which fell
upon the field of the ice as a die of crimson and of gold, awakened
him at last from his depression. A crisp wind of morning gave colour
to his face; the keen air was as a tonic to his veins. When he stood
up to salute his chief there was the seal of health upon his cheeks,
the light of untroubled youth in his eyes.
“You sent for me, my General?”
Stefanovitch, who loved Paul as a son, surveyed him critically through
the searching eyeglass before he answered.
“Certainly, Captain, I sent for you. You have heard the news?”
“The news, General?”
“As I say, the news--that they have the plan of Battery 3 in London,
sold to them by someone who knows it as you know it or as I know it.”
Stefanovitch spoke with assumed unconcern, as though the matter were
the most trifling he could mention. It was his habit to avoid any
outward display of anger; his glance was ever more feared than his
word. Paul knew this habit well; he dreaded it as a criminal may dread
the jests of his judge.
“They have the plan of Battery 3 in London, General! Oh, but that is a
lie!” he cried, looking from one to the other with dazed eyes and
questioning glance; “it is a lie, I say, and I will tell them so! They
cannot have the plan; it is impossible. Who should have given it to
them? Who is there in Kronstadt who would sell his country’s secrets?
Who is there that could sell them? You know that it is not true, my
General. Lord God! that they should bring such a charge against me!”
Moment by moment he began to realise the gravity of the unspoken
accusation. Sweat stood upon his forehead, tears welled up in his
eyes. He had worked so unselfishly to make himself a good servant of
Kronstadt that this overwhelming blow seemed to strike at the heart of
his honour and his life. They had implied that he was unworthy of the
trust--he, Paul Zassulic, who would have died willingly if the citadel
had asked his life of him. They could put no greater affront upon him.
“It is a lie!” he continued to repeat, while Nikolai Stefanovitch
watched him approvingly, and old Bonzo’s grey eyes twinkled cunningly;
“it is a monstrous lie, General! No one has entered the fort but those
who have work there; I will swear to it upon the Holy Gospel. If you
doubt me, send for Seroff Ossinksy--he can tell you; he will laugh at
the story as I would laugh at it were my honour not at stake. Oh, they
cannot have the plan in London--you know that they cannot.”
He appealed to them pitifully, looking from one to the other
questioningly, but he read nothing in their faces, neither of sympathy
nor of reassurance. Bonzo wore, as ever, the changeless mask of iron
severity; Stefanovitch lolled back in his chair and stared at the
speaker as he would have stared at some defaulter hurried to the
judgment.
“I know nothing,” he said in answer to the earnest protestations,
“nothing at all beyond that which I am told by those in Petersburg.
They say that the plan of the fort has been sold to the English; you,
who were in command of the battery until a month ago, answer that it
is impossible, because no stranger has ever been permitted within the
enceinte. Is that so, Captain?”
“I will swear it, General, and my successor will swear it too.”
“You shall both swear it before the court which will investigate this
report. If your word be accepted, there is an end of the matter. For
my part I will tell you that I regard the story as ridiculous. The
plan which the English have bought is a forgery; there can be no doubt
of it. It rests upon us to convince the Prince of that, and to be
unresting in our vigilance. I need say no more, Captain; I am not here
to teach you your duty; the city is well served when she has servants
like Paul Zassulic.”
Captain Paul opened his eyes. He had believed that they brought a
charge against him; he knew now that they did not. The burden of
suspicion was more than he could bear, and when it fell from his
shoulders, an impulse of gratitude and devotion came upon him.
“Thank you, General,” he said simply. “I could ask nothing more than
your approval.”
Stefanovitch dismissed him with a wave of the hand. He went from the
room gladly, and with the purpose to seek out his sergeant at once and
to question him. But before he had crossed the great courtyard of the
house, someone touched him upon the shoulder; and when he turned about
quickly he found that Bonzo had followed him from the room.
“Ha! Colonel, you are going my way,” he cried.
“I am going to the prison,” said the old soldier grimly. “It will be
full enough by-and-bye if there is anything in this news.”
“But there cannot be anything, Colonel--I am ready to swear it upon
the Gospels. No one has entered the fort----”
Bonzo shrugged his shoulders, his little eyes were screwed up until
they shone like the eyes of a ferret.
“You say no one?” he asked.
“Certainly. I would swear it to the Emperor.”
“Do you forget that you had a visitor at the fort yesterday?”
“Yesterday?”
“I say so--the little Englishwoman, La Petite. What of her?”
Captain Paul could not have stopped in his walk more abruptly if a
chasm had opened at his feet.
“You mean Mademoiselle Marian, my Colonel?”
“Certainly. Is she no one? Did you think so last night when you danced
with her for two hours, eh, my friend? Shall I tell her how soon you
forget the little lessons in gunnery? Shall I say that you are
prepared to swear to the Emperor that she is nobody, hein?”
Captain Paul roared with laughter.
“Sapristi!” he cried, “that I should forget Mademoiselle Marian, and
that you should remind me of her! Of course there is our spy. Why did
I not think of it before? Oh, this will amuse the General when I tell
him to-night. La Petite--who does not know which end you load a gun?
She has made the plans, there cannot be a doubt of it. We will tell
the people of Petersburg so. Jest for jest, n’est-ce pas, mon Colonel,
and ours a little more foolish than theirs. _La belle Anglaise_--that
I should forget her. Oh, quelle bêtise!”
The humour of the idea seized upon him uncontrollably, and upon the
old soldier, so that they went down to their work laughing as lads at
play. When they separated at last before the doors of the church of
St. Vladimir, Captain Paul stood a moment to watch the other walking
toward the prison. Then, being quite alone, his face paled suddenly,
and he seemed about to reel against one of the pillars of the
cathedral.
“My God!” he thought, “if the jest should be no jest!”
* * * * *
Old Bonzo, lumbering along the narrow streets of Kronstadt, was saying
to himself, “She is too innocent; she shall be watched--night and
day--the little Englishwoman.”