"Surely Providence has sent you here! Mr. Woodroffe must have followed you from England. He is my enemy. You must take me from here and hide me. They intend to send me into exile. Have you ever been in Petersburg before? Do you know anyone here?"
Then when I had read, she handed me her pencil and below I wrote--
"I will do my best, dear friend. I have been once in Petersburg. But is it not best that we should escape at once from Russia?"
"Impossible at present," she wrote. "We should both be arrested at the frontier. It would be best to go into hiding here in Petersburg. I believed Woodroffe to be my friend, but I have found only this day that he is my enemy. He knew that I was in Kajana, and was in Abo when he learned of my escape. He went with two other men in search of us, and discovered us that night when we sought shelter at the wood-cutter"s hut. Without making his presence known he waited outside until you were asleep, and then he came and looked in at my window. At first I was alarmed, but quickly I saw that he was a friend. He told me that the police were in the vicinity and intended to raid the hut, therefore I fled with him, first down to Tammerfors and then to Abo, and on here. At that time I did not see the dastardly trap he had laid in order to get me out of the Baron"s clutches and wring from me my secret. If I confess, he intends to give me up to the police, who will send me to the mines."
"Does your secret concern him?" I asked in writing.
"Yes," she wrote in response. "It would be equally in his interests as well as those of Baron Oberg if I were sent to Saghalien and my ident.i.ty effaced. I am a Russian subject, as I have already told you, therefore with a Ministerial order against me I am in deadliest peril."
"Trust in me," I scribbled quickly. "I will act upon any suggestion you make. Have you any female friend in whom you could trust to hide you until this danger is past?"
"There is one friend--a true friend. Will you take a note to her?" she wrote, to which I instantly nodded in the affirmative.
Then rising, she obtained some ink and pen and wrote a letter, the contents of which she did not show me before she sealed it. I sat watching her beautiful head bent beneath the shaded lamplight, catching her profile and noticing how eminently handsome it was, superb and unblemished in her youthful womanhood.
I watched her write the superscription upon the envelope: "Madame Olga Sta.s.sulevitch, modiste, Scredni Prospect, 231, Vasili Ostroff." I knew that the district was on the opposite side of the city, close to the Little Neva.
"Take a drosky at once, see her, and await a reply. In the meantime, I will prepare to be ready when you return," she wrote. "If Olga is not at home, ask to see the Red Priest--in Russian, "_Krasny-pastor_." Return quickly, as I fear Woodroffe may come back. If so, I am lost."
I a.s.sured her I would not lose a single instant, and five minutes later I was tearing down the Morskaya in a drosky along the ca.n.a.l and across the Nicholas Bridge to the address upon the envelope.
The house was, I found, somewhat smaller than its neighbors, but not let out in flats as the others. Upon the door was a large bra.s.s plate bearing the name, "Olga Sta.s.sulevitch: modes." I pressed the electric b.u.t.ton, and in answer a tall, clean-shaven Russian servant opened the door.
"Madame is not at home," was his brief reply to my inquiry.
"Then I will see the Red Priest," I said in a lower tone. "I come from Elma Heath." Thereupon, without further word, the man admitted me into the long, dark hall and closed the door with an apology that the gas was not lighted. But striking a match he led me up the broad staircase and into a small, cosy, well-furnished room on the second floor, evidently the sitting-room of some studious person, judging from the books and critical reviews lying about.
For a few minutes I waited there, until the door reopened, and there entered a man of medium height, with a shock of long snow-white hair and almost patriarchal beard, whose dark eyes that age had dimmed flashed out at me with a look of curious inquiry, and whose movements were those of a person not quite at his ease.
"I have called on behalf of Mademoiselle Elma Heath, to give this letter to Madame Sta.s.sulevitch, or if she is absent to place it in the hands of the Red Priest," I explained in my best Russian.
"Very well, sir," the old man responded in quite good English. "I am the person you seek," and taking the letter he opened it and read it through.
I saw by the expression on his furrowed face that its contents caused him the utmost consternation. His countenance, already pale, blanched to the lips, while in his eyes there shot a fire of quick apprehension. The thin, almost transparent hand holding the letter trembled visibly.
"You know Mademoiselle--eh?" he asked in a hoa.r.s.e, strained voice as he turned to me. "You will help her to escape?"
"I will risk my own life in order to save hers," I declared.
"And your devotion to her is prompted by what?" he inquired suspiciously.
I was silent for a moment. Then I confessed the truth.
"My affection."
"Ah!" he sighed deeply. "Poor young lady! She, who has enemies on every hand, sadly needs a friend. But can we trust you--have you no fear?"
"Of what?"
"Of being implicated in the coming revolution in Russia? Remember I am the Red Priest. Have you never heard of me? My name is Otto Kampf."
Otto Kampf!
I stood before him open-mouthed. Who in Russia had not heard of that mysterious unknown person who had directed a hundred conspiracies against the Imperial Autocrat, and yet the ident.i.ty of whom the police had always failed to discover. It was believed that Kampf had once been professor of chemistry at Moscow University, and that he had invented that most terrible and destructive explosive used by the revolutionists.
The ingredients of the powerful compound and the mode of firing it was the secret of the Nihilists alone--and Otto Kampf, the mysterious leader, whose personality was unknown even to the conspirators themselves, directed those constant attempts which held the Emperor and his Government in such hourly terror.
Rewards without number had been offered by the Ministry of the Interior for the betrayal and arrest of the unseen man whose power in Russia, permeating every cla.s.s, was greater than that of the Emperor himself--at whose word one day the people would rise in a body and destroy their oppressors.
The Emperor, the Ministers, the police, and the bureaucrats knew this, yet they were powerless--they knew that the mysterious professor who had disappeared from Moscow fifteen years before and had never since been seen was only waiting his opportunity to strike a blow that would stagger and crush the Empire from end to end--yet of his whereabouts they were in utter ignorance.
"You are surprised," the old man laughed, noticing my amazement. "Well, you are not one of us, yet I need not impress upon you the absolute necessity, for Mademoiselle"s sake, to preserve the secret of my existence. It is because you are not a member of "The Will of the People," that you have never heard of "The Red Priest"--red because I wrote my ultimatum to the Czar in the blood of one of his victims knouted in the fortress of Peter and Paul, and priest because I preach the gospel of freedom and justice."
"I shall say nothing," I said, gazing at the strangely striking figure before me--the unknown man who directed the great upheaval that was to revolutionize Russia. "My only desire is to save Mademoiselle Heath."
"And you are prepared to do so at risk of your own liberty--your own life? Ah! you said you love her. Would not this be a test of your affection?"
"I am prepared for any test, as long as she escapes the trap which her enemies have set for her. I succeeded in saving her from Kajana, and I intend to save her now."
"Was it you who actually entered Kajana and s.n.a.t.c.hed her from that tomb!" he exclaimed, and he took my hand enthusiastically, adding--"I have no further need to doubt you." And turning to the table he wrote an address upon a slip of paper, saying, "Take Mademoiselle there. She will find a safe place of concealment. But go quickly, for every moment places you both in more deadly peril. Hide yourself there also."
I thanked him and left at once, but as I stepped out of the house and re-entered the drosky I saw close by, lurking in the shadow, the spy of "The Strangler of Finland," who had traveled with me from Abo.
Our eyes met, and he recognized me, notwithstanding my light overcoat and new hat.
Then, with heart-sinking, the ghastly truth flashed upon me. All had been in vain. Elma was lost to me.
CHAPTER XIV
HER HIGHNESS IS INQUISITIVE
Instantly the danger was apparent, and instead of driving back to the hotel, I called out to the man to take me to the Moscow railway station, in order to put the spy off the scent. I knew he would follow me, but as he was on foot, with no drosky in sight, I should be able to reach the station before he could, and there elude him.
Over the stones we rattled, leaving the lurking agent standing in the deep shadow, but on turning back I saw him dash across the road to a by-street, where, in all probability, he had a conveyance in waiting.
Then, after we had crossed the Neva, I countermanded my order to the man, saying--
"Don"t go right up to the station. Turn into the Liteinoi Prospect to the left, and put me down there. Drive quickly, and I"ll pay double fare."
He whipped his horses, and we turned into that maze of dark, ill-lit, narrow streets that lies between the Vosnesenski and the Nevski, turning and winding until we emerged at last into the main thoroughfare again, and then at last we turned into the street I had indicated--a wide road of handsome buildings where I knew I was certain to be able to instantly get another drosky. I flung the man his money, alighted, and two minutes later was driving on towards the Alexander Bridge, traveling in a circle back to the hotel. Time after time I glanced behind, but saw nothing of the Baron"s spy, who had evidently gone to the station with all speed, expecting that I was leaving the capital.
I found Elma in her room, ready dressed to go out, wearing a long traveling-cloak, and in her hand was a small dressing-case. She was pale and full of anxiety until I showed her the slip of paper which Otto Kampf had given me with the address written upon it, and then together we hurried forth.