"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 pa.s.sed 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 a.s.sa.s.sinate 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 antic.i.p.ate that that poor man would do what he did," the Princess went on with pa.s.sionate 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 compa.s.sion 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.