"Pardon. I hope I do not intrude?" said M. Karovsky, addressing
himself to Mrs. Brooke with the suave assurance of a thorough man of
the world. "I saw through the window that Mr. Brooke had returned, and
as my time here is limited--_me voici_." Then advancing a few steps
and holding out his hand to Gerald, he added: "It is five years, _mon
ami_, since we last met. Confess now, I am one of the last men in the
world whom you thought to see here?"
"You are indeed, Karovsky," responded Gerald as he shook his visitor's
proffered hand, but with no great show of cordiality.--"Have you been
long in England?"
"Not long. I am a bird of passage. I come and go, and obey the orders
that are given me. That is all."
"My wife, Mrs. Brooke. But you have seen her already.--Clara, Monsieur
Karovsky is a gentleman whose acquaintance I had the honour of making
during the time I was living abroad."
"May we hope to have the pleasure of Monsieur Karovsky's company to
dinner?" asked Clara in her most gracious manner, while at the same
time hoping in her heart that the invitation would not be accepted.
"_Merci_, madame," responded the Russian, for such he was. "I should be
delighted, if the occasion admitted of it; but, as I said before, my
time is limited. I must leave London by the night-mail. I am due in
Paris at ten o'clock tomorrow."
"For the present, then, I must ask you to excuse me," said Clara.
Karovsky hastened to open the door for her, and bowed low as she swept
out of the room.
"That man is the bearer of ill news, and Gerald knows it," was the
young wife's unspoken thought as she left the two together.
M. Karovsky was a tall, well-built man, to all appearance some few
years over thirty in point of age. His short black hair was parted
carefully down the middle; his black eyes were at once piercing and
brilliant; he had a long and rather thin face, a longish nose, a
mobile and flexible mouth, and a particularly fine arrangement of
teeth. He wore neither beard nor moustache, and his complexion had the
faint yellow tint of antique ivory. He was not especially handsome;
but there was something striking and out of the common in his
appearance, so that people who were introduced to him casually in
society wanted to know more about him. An enigma is not without its
attractions for many people, and Karovsky had the air of being one
whether he was so in reality or not. He was a born linguist, as so
many of his countrymen are, and spoke the chief European languages
with almost equal fluency and equal purity of accent.
"Fortune has been kind to you, my friend, in finding for you so
charming a wife," he said, as he lounged across the room with his
hands in his pockets, after closing the door behind Mrs. Brooke. "But
Fortune has been kind to you in more ways than one."
"Karovsky, you have something to tell me," said Brooke a little grimly.
"You did not come here to pay compliments, nor without a motive. But
will you not be seated?"
Karovsky drew up a chair. "As you say--I am not here without a
motive," he remarked. Then, with a quick expressive gesture, which was
altogether un-English, he added: "Ah, bah! I feel like a bird of
ill-omen that has winged its way into Paradise with a message from the
nether world."
"Whatever your message may be, pray do not hesitate to deliver it."
But apparently the Russian did hesitate. He got up, crossed the room
to one of the windows, looked out for half a minute, then went back
and resumed his seat. "Eight years have come and gone, Gerald Brooke,"
he began in an impressive tone, "since you allied yourself by some of
the most solemn oaths possible for a man to take to that Sacred Cause
to which I also have the honour of being affiliated."
"Do you think that I have forgotten! At that time I was an impetuous
and enthusiastic boy of eighteen, with no knowledge of the world save
what I had gathered from books, and with a head that was full of wild,
vague dreams of Liberty and Universal Brotherhood."
"The fact of your becoming one of Us is the best of all proofs that
the cause of Liberty at that time was dear to your heart."
"But when as a boy I joined the Cause, I was ignorant of much I have
learned since that time."
"The world does not stand still. One naturally knows more to-day than
one did eight years ago."
"Karovsky, I know this--that the Cause, which, when I joined it, I
believed to be so pure in its aims, so lofty in its ideas, so
all-embracing in its philanthropy, has, since that time, been stained
by crimes which make me shudder when I think of them--has dragged its
colours through shambles reeking with the blood of those who have
fallen victims to its blind and ferocious notions of revenge."
"Pardon. But can it be possible that I am listening to one who, only
eight short years ago, was saturated with philanthropic ideas which
seemed expansive enough to include the whole human race--one whose
great longing was that every man should be free and happy?--Ah, yes,
you are the same--only time and the world have contrived to spoil you,
as they spoil so many others. In those days you were poor; now you are
rich. Then you had no fixed home; you were a wanderer from city to
city; your future was clouded and uncertain. Now, you are the wealthy
Mr. Brooke--a pillar of your country: this grand old mansion and all
the broad acres, for I know not how far around it, are yours. You are
married to one whom you love, and who loves you in return. Away, then,
with the wild notions of our hot youth!"
"Karovsky, you wrong me. My love of my fellows is as ardent as ever it
was. My---- But why prolong a discussion that could serve no good end?
You have a message for me?"
"I have." The man was evidently ill at ease. He rose, crossed to the
chimney-piece, took up one or two curios and examined them through his
eyeglass, then went back and resumed his seat. "Gerald Brooke," he
continued, "eight years ago, on a certain winter evening, in a certain
underground room in Warsaw, and before some half-dozen men whose faces
you were not permitted to see, you, of your own free-will, took the
solemn oaths which affiliated you to that great Cause for the
furtherance of which thousands of others have given their fortunes,
their lives, their all. From that day till this you have been a
passive brother of the Society; nothing has been demanded at your
hands; and you might almost be excused if the events of that winter
night had come at length to seem to you little more than a
half-remembered dream. That you have not been called upon before now
is no proof that you have been overlooked or forgotten, but simply
that your services have not been required. Other instruments were at
hand to do the work that was needed to be done. But at length the day
has come to you, Gerald Brooke, as it comes to most men who live and
wait."
Gerald had changed colour more than once during the foregoing speech.
"What is it that I am called upon to do?" he asked in a voice that was
scarcely raised above a whisper.
"You are aware that when an individual is needed to carry out any of
the secret decrees of the Supreme Tribunal, that individual is drawn
for by lot?"
"And my name"----
"Has been so drawn."
The light faded out of Gerald Brooke's eyes; a death-like pallor crept
over his face; lie could scarcely command his voice as for the second
time he asked: "What is it that I am called upon to do?"
"The Supreme Tribunal have decreed that a certain individual shall
suffer the penalty of death. You are the person drawn by lot to carry
out the sentence."
"They would make an assassin of me?--Never!"
"You are bound by your oath to carry out the behests of the Tribunal,
be they what they may."
"No oath can bind a man to become a murderer."
"One of the chief conditions attached to your oath is that of blind
and unquestioning obedience."
"Karovsky, this is monstrous."
"I am sorry that things have fallen out as they have, _mon ami_; but
such being the case, there is no help for it."
"I--Gerald Brooke--whose ancestors fought at Cressy, to sink to the
level of a common assassin? Never!"
"Pardon. Might it not be as well, before you express your
determination in such emphatic terms, to consider what would be the
consequence of a refusal on your part to comply with the instructions
of which I have the misfortune to be the bearer?--Mrs. Brooke is very
young to be left a widow."
"Karovsky!"
"Pardon. But that is what it means. Any affiliated member who may be
so ill-advised as to refuse to carry out the decrees of the Tribunal
renders himself liable to the extreme penalty; and so surely as you,
Gerald Brooke, are now a living man, so surely, in a few short weeks,
should you persist in your refusal, will your wife be left a widow."
"This is horrible--most horrible!"
"Obedience, blind and unquestioning, the utter abnegation of your
individuality to the will of your superiors, is the first great rule
of the Propaganda to which you and I have the honour to belong. But
all this you knew, or ought to have known, long ago."
"Obedience carried to the verge of murder is obedience no longer--it
becomes a crime. However you may put it, assassination remains
assassination still."
"Pardon. We recognise no such term in our vocabulary."
"Karovsky, had you been called upon to do this deed"----
"I should have done it. For if there be one man in the world, Brooke,
whom I have cause to hate more than another, that man is Baron Otto
von Rosenberg!"
"Von Rosenberg!"
"Pardon. Did I not mention the name before? But he is the man."
For a moment or two Gerald could not speak. "It is but half an hour
since I parted from him," he contrived to say at last.--"Karovsky, I
feel as if I were entangled in some horrible nightmare--as if I were
being suffocated in the folds of some monstrous Python."
"It is a feeling that will wear itself out in the course of a little
while. I remember---- But that matters not."
"But Von Rosenberg is not a Russian; he is a German ex-diplomatist.
What can such a man as he have done to incur so terrible a vengeance?"
"Listen. Four years ago, when attached to the Embassy at St
Petersburg, certain secrets were divulged to him, after he had pledged
his sacred word of honour that no use whatever should be made of the
information so acquired. Wretch that he was! Von Rosenberg turned,
traitor, and revealed everything to those in power. In the dead of
night, a certain house in which a secret printing press was at work
was surrounded by the police. Two of the inmates were shot down while
attempting to escape. The rest were made prisoners, among them being
three women and a boy of seventeen--my brother. Two of those arrested
died in prison, or were never heard of more; the rest were condemned
to the mines. On the road, my brother and one of the women sank and
died, killed by the dreadful hardships they had to undergo; the rest
are now rotting away their lives in the silver mines, forgotten by all
but the dear ones they left behind.--You now know the reason why the
Baron Otto von Rosenberg has been sentenced to death. The vengeance of
the Supreme Tribunal may be slow, but it is very sure."
There was silence for a few moments, then Gerald said: "All this may
be as you say; but I tell you again, Karovsky, that mine shall not be
the hand to strike the blow."
"Then you seal your own death-warrant"
"So be it. Life at such a price would not be worth having. 'Death
before Dishonour' is the motto of our house. Dishonour shall never
come to it through me."
Gerald rose and walked to the window. His face was pale, his eyes were
full of trouble; what he had said had been lacking neither in dignity
nor pathos.
The Russian's cold glance followed him, not without admiration.
"English to the backbone," he muttered under his breath. "It was a
blunder ever to allow such a man to become one of Us." Then he looked
at his watch, and started to find it was so late. "I can stay no
longer--I must go," he said aloud. "But remember my last warning
words." He took up his hat and moved slowly towards the window.
"Karovsky, for the last time I solemnly declare that this man's death
shall not lie at my door!" Gerald sank into a chair, let his elbows
rest on the table, and buried his face between his hands.
"I have nothing more to say," remarked the Russian. He stepped through
the window, his hat in his hand, and then turned.
At that moment the door opened, and Mrs. Brooke, on the point of
entering the room, paused suddenly as her eyes took in the scene
before her. "Gerald!" she exclaimed in a frightened voice, and then
her gaze travelled from her husband to Karovsky. The latter, with his
eyes still resting on the bowed figure at the table, pronounced in low
clear accents the one word, "Remember!" Then he bowed low to Mrs.
Brooke, and next moment was gone.