A STRANGE CONFESSION
I had last seen the strange, beautiful, wicked woman known as the
Princess Y---- bending in a passion of hysterical remorse over the
body of the man she had driven to death, on the snow-clad train
outside Mukden.
I have had some experience of women, and especially of the class
which mixes in the secret politics of the European Courts. But Sophia
Y---- was an enigma to me. There was nothing about her which
suggested the adventuress. And there was much which tended to support
the story which had won the belief of her august mistress--that she
was an involuntary agent, who had been victimized by an unscrupulous
minister of police, by means of a false charge, and who genuinely
loathed the tasks she was too feeble to refuse.
I had not been back in Petersburg very long when one afternoon the
hotel waiter came to tell me that a lady desired to see me privately.
The lady, he added, declined to give her name, but declared that she
was well known to me.
I had come back to the hotel, I should mention, in the character of
Mr. Sterling, the self-appointed agent of the fraternity of British
peace-makers. It was necessary for me to have some excuse for
residing in Petersburg during the war, and under this convenient
shelter I could from time to time prepare more effectual disguises.
I was not altogether surprised when my mysterious visitor raised her
veil and disclosed the features of the Princess herself.
But I was both surprised and shocked by the frightened,
grief-stricken look on the face of this woman whom I had come to
dread as my most formidable opponent in the Russian Court.
"Mr. Sterling!--Monsieur V----?" she cried in an agitated voice that
seemed ready to break down into a sob. "Can you forgive me for
intruding on you? I dare not speak to you freely in my own house. I
am beset by spies."
"Sit down, Princess," I said soothingly, as I rolled forward a
comfortable chair. "Of course I am both charmed and flattered by your
visit, whatever be its cause."
With feminine intuition she marked the reserve in my response to her
appeal.
"Ah! You distrust me, and you are quite right!" she exclaimed,
casting herself into the chair.
She fixed her luminous eyes on me in a deep look, half-imploring,
half-reproachful.
"It is true, then, what they have been telling me? You were the man,
dressed as an inspector of the Third Section who traveled on the
train with me? And you saw the death"--her words were interrupted by
a shudder--"of that unhappy man?"
It was not very easy to preserve my composure in the face of her
emotion. Nevertheless, at the risk of appearing callous, I replied:
"I cannot pretend to understand your question. However, even if I did
it would make no difference.
"Since you know my name is A. V----, you must know also that I never
allow myself to talk about my work."
The Princess winced under these cold words almost as though she had
been physically rebuffed. She clasped her delicately-gloved hands
together, and murmured as though to herself:
"He will not believe in me! He will not be convinced!"
I felt myself in a very difficult position. Either this woman was
thoroughly repentant, and sincerely anxious to make some genuine
communication to me, or else she was an actress whose powers might
have excited envy in the Bernhardt herself.
I concluded that I could lose nothing by encouraging her to speak.
"You must pardon me if I seem distrustful," I said with a wholly
sympathetic expression. "I have my principles, and cannot depart from
them. But I have every wish to convince you of my personal
friendship."
She interrupted me with a terrible glance.
"Personal friendship! Monsieur, do you know what I have come here to
tell you?"
And rising wildly to her feet, she spread out her hands in a gesture
of utter despair:
"They have ordered me to take your life!"
I am not a man who is easily surprised.
The adventures I have passed through, some of them far more
extraordinary than anything I have recorded in my public revelations,
have accustomed me to meet almost any situation with diplomatic
presence of mind.
But on this occasion I am obliged to admit that I was fairly taken
aback.
As the lovely but dangerous woman whom I had cause to regard as the
most formidable instrument in the hands of the conspirators, avowed
to my face that she had been charged with the mission to assassinate
me, I sprang from my chair and confronted her.
She stood, swaying slightly, as though the intensity of her emotion
was about to overpower her.
"Do you mean what you say? Do you know what you have said?" I
demanded.
The Princess Y---- made no answer, but she lifted her violet eyes to
mine, and I saw the big tears welling up and beginning to overflow.
I was dismayed. My strength of mind seemed to desert me. I have
looked on without a tear when men have fallen dead at my feet, but I
have never been able to remain calm before a woman in tears.
"Madame! Princess!" I was on the point of addressing her by a yet
more familiar name. "At least, sit down and recover yourself."
Like one dazed, I led her to a chair. Like one dazed, she sank into
it in obedience to my authoritative pressure.
"Come," I said in a tone which I strove to render at once firm and
soothing, "it is clear that we must understand each other. You have
come here to tell me this, I suppose?"
"At the risk of my life," she breathed. "What must you think of me!"
I recalled the fate of poor Menken, whom the woman before me had led
to his doom, though she had not struck the blow.
In spite of myself, a momentary shudder went through me.
The sensitive woman saw or felt it, and shook in her turn.
"Believe me or not, as you will," she exclaimed desperately. "I
swear to you that I have never knowingly been guilty of taking life.
"Never for one moment did I anticipate that that poor man would do
what he did," the Princess went on with passionate earnestness. "I
tempted him to give me the Czar's letter, and I destroyed it--I
confess that. Are not such things done every day in secret politics?
Have you never intercepted a despatch?"
It was a suggestive question. I thought of more than one incident in
my own career which might be harshly received by a strict moralist.
It is true that I have always been engaged on what I believed was a
lawful task; but the due execution of that task had sometimes
involved actions which I should have shrunk from in private life.
"I will not excuse myself, Madame," I answered slowly. "Neither have
I accused you."
"Your tone is an accusation," she returned with a touch of
bitterness. "Oh, I know well that men are ready to pardon many things
in one another which they will not pardon in us."
"I am sorry if I have wounded you," I said with real compunction.
"Let us say no more about the tragedy that is past. Am I right in
thinking that you have come to me for aid?"
"I do not know. I do not know why I am here. Perhaps it is because I
am mad."
I gazed at her flushed face and trembling hands, unable to resist the
feeling of compassion which was creeping over me.
What was I to think? What was this woman's real purpose in coming to
me?
Had her employers, had the unscrupulous Petrovitch, or the ruthless
Minister of Police, indeed charged her to remove me from their path;
and had her courage broken down under the hideous burden?
Or was this merely a ruse to win my confidence; or, perhaps, to
frighten me into resigning my task and leaving the Russian capital?
Did she wish to save my life, or her own?
I sat regarding her, bewildered by these conjectures.
I saw that I must get her to say more.
"At least you have come to aid me," I protested. "You have given me a
warning for which I cannot be sufficiently grateful."
"If you believe it is a genuine one," she retorted. Already she had
divined my difficulties and doubts.
"I do not doubt that you mean it genuinely," I hastened to respond.
"There is, of course, the possibility that you yourself have been
deceived."
"Ah!"
She looked up at me in what I could not think was other than real
surprise.
"You think so?" she cried eagerly. The next moment her head drooped
again. "No, no. I have known them too long. They have never trifled
with me before. Believe me, Monsieur, when they told me that you were
to be murdered they were not joking with me."
"But they might have meant to use you for the purpose of terrifying
me."
She stared at me in unaffected astonishment.
"Terrify--_you_!" She pronounced the words with an emphasis not
altogether unflattering. "You are better known in Russia than you
imagine, M. V----."
I passed over the remark.
"Still they must have foreseen the possibility that you would shrink
from such a task; that your womanly instincts would prove too much
for you. At least they have never required such work of you before?"
Against my will the last words became a question. I was anxious to be
assured that the hands of the Princess were free from the stain of
blood.
"Never! They dared not! They _could_ not!" she cried indignantly.
"You do not know my history. Perhaps you do not care to know it?"
Whatever I knew or suspected, I could make only one answer to such an
appeal. Indeed, I was desirous to understand the meaning of one word
which the Princess Y---- had just used.
"Listen," she said, speaking with an energy and dignity which I could
not but respect, "while I tell you what I am. I am a condemned
murderess!"
"Impossible!"
"Impossible in any other country, I grant you, but very possible in
Russia. You have heard, I suppose, everybody has heard, of the deaths
of my husband and his children. The first two deaths were natural, I
swear it. I, at all events, had no more to do with them than if they
had occurred in the planet Saturn. Prince Y---- committed suicide.
And he did so because of me; I do not deny it. But it was not because
he suspected me of any hand in the deaths of his children. It was
because he knew I hated him!
"The story is almost too terrible to be told. That old man had bought
me. He bought me from my father, who was head over ears in debt, and
on the brink of ruin. I was sold--the only portion of his property
that remained to be sold. And from the first hour of the purchase I
hated, oh, how I loathed and hated that old man!"
There was a wild note in her voice that hinted at unutterable things.
"And he," she continued with a shiver, "he loved me, loved me with a
passion that was like madness. He could hardly bear me out of his
sight.
"I killed him, yes, morally, I have no doubt I killed him. He
lavished everything on me, jewels, wealth, all the forms of luxury.
He made a will leaving me the whole of his great fortune. But I could
not endure him, and that killed him. I think," she hesitated and
lowered her voice to a whisper, "I think he killed himself to please
me."
Hardened as I am, I felt a thrill of horror. The Princess was right;
the story was too terrible to be told.
"Then the police came on the scene. From the first they knew well
enough that I was innocent. But they were determined to make me
guilty. The head of the secret service at that time was Baron Kratz.
He had had his eye on me for some time. The Czar, believing in my
guilt, had ordered him not to spare me, and that fatal order gave him
a free hand.
"How he managed it all, I hardly know. The servants were bullied or
bribed into giving false evidence against me. But one part of their
evidence was true enough; even I could not deny that I had hated
Prince Y----, and that his death came as a welcome relief.
"There was a secret trial, and I was condemned. They read out my
sentence. And then, when it was all over, Kratz came to me, and
offered me life and liberty in return for my services as an agent of
the Third Section."
"And to save your life you consented. Well, I do not judge you," I
said.
The Princess glanced at me with a strange smile.
"To save my life! I see you do not yet know our Holy Russia. Shall I
tell you what my sentence was?"
"Was it not death, then?"
"Yes, death--by the knout!"
"My God!"
I gazed at her stupified. Her whole beauty seemed to be focussed in
one passionate protest. Knouted to death! I saw the form before me
stripped, and lashed to the triangles, while the knotted thong,
wielded by the hangman's hands, buried itself in the soft flesh.
I no longer disbelieved. I no longer even doubted. The very horror of
the story had the strength of truth.
For some time neither of us spoke.
"But now, surely, you have made up your mind to break lose from this
thraldom?" I demanded. "And, if so, and you will trust me, I will
undertake to save you."
"You forget, do you not, that you yourself are not free? You surely
do not mean that you would lay aside your work for my sake?"
It was a question which disconcerted me in more ways than one. In a
secret service agent, suspicion becomes second nature. I caught
myself asking whether all that had gone before was not merely
intended to lead up to this one question, and I cursed myself for
the doubt.
"My duty to my present employer comes first, of course," I admitted.
"But as soon as I am free again----"
"If you are still alive," she put in significantly.
"Ah! You mean?"
"I mean that when they find out that I am not to be depended on, they
will not have far to look for others."
"It is strange that they should have chosen you in the first place,"
I said thoughtfully. "You said they _could_ not ask you."
"They did not offer me this mission. I volunteered."
"You volunteered!"
She shook herself impatiently.
"Surely you understand? I heard them deciding on your death. And so I
undertook the task."
"Because?"
"Because I wished to save you. I had great difficulty. At first they
were inclined to refuse me--to suspect my motives. I had to convince
them that I hated you for having outwitted me. And I persuaded them
that none of their ordinary instruments were capable of dealing with
you."
"And you meant to give me this warning all along?"
"I meant to save you from them. Do you not see, as long as we are
together, as long as you are visiting me, and I am seen to be
following you up, they will not interfere. If I manage the affair
skilfully it may be weeks before they suspect that I am playing them
false. I shall have my excuse ready. It is no disgrace to be foiled
by A. V."
Again there was an interval of silence. The Princess prepared to go.
"Stay!" I protested. "I have not thanked you. Indeed, I do not seem
to have heard all. You had some reason, surely, for wishing to
preserve my life."
"And what does my reason matter?"
"It matters very much to me. Perhaps," I gave her a searching look,
"perhaps the Dowager Czaritza has enlisted you on our side?"
The beautiful woman rose to her feet, and turned her face from me.
"Think so, if you will. I tell you it does not matter."
"And I tell you it does matter. Princess!"
"Don't! Don't speak to me, please! Let me go home. I am not well."
Trembling violently in every limb, she was making her way toward the
door, when it was suddenly flung open, and the voice of the hotel
servant announced:
"M. Petrovitch!"
The head of the Manchurian Syndicate walked in with a smile on his
face, saw the Princess Y---- coming toward him, and stopped short,
the smile changing to a dark frown.