"It was Madame Quero who wrote that letter?" suggested Nello quickly.
"No, my friend, it was not, although it would be quite correct to say that she was the cause of that letter being written. Of course, I had no clue; the note was left by a young woman whom the porter took very little notice of: he was not at all sure that he would remember her.
That night I was dining with the Count--of course, treating the note as a genuine one, I had already acted upon it and despatched the police to Pavlovsk. Just as I was about to leave, a sudden idea occurred to me to show it to Golitzine and ask him if he could help me. His Excellency is a very wonderful man. Above all men that I have met, he possesses, in the highest degree, the qualities of genius and intuition."
Beilski was not a man who underrated himself, but he was not mean or petty. In this particular matter he was disposed to give to the Count all the credit that was his due, even although it compelled him to play second fiddle.
"With the rapidity of lightning, he jumped at the conclusion that you were the person threatened. We made sure that you were neither at the Zouroff Palace, where you had told him you were going to play, nor at your hotel. Surmise, under such circ.u.mstances, became certainty. The rest you can guess almost yourself."
"All the same, I would like you to tell me, General," said Corsini.
"The letter served its purpose admirably," pursued General Beilski.
"You were rescued and brought back to St. Petersburg. One significant fact you revealed to us was that La Belle Quero had strongly dissuaded you from playing at the Palace. Another one, equally significant in our eyes, was that the Princess Nada had urged you not to walk home that night. We put two and two together."
"The letter, then, might have been sent by either of the two women?
That, I take it, is your Excellency"s meaning?" commented Nello.
"Precisely. I had the two maids brought before me. The singer"s I soon dismissed. She did not correspond in the slightest degree to my porter"s rather hazy recollections of the young woman who had brought the note. The second shot was more successful."
"The maid of the Princess Nada, of course?"
"Yes, a slim young thing--I forgot to say the other was short and plump--frightened out of her wits by the sudden turn of events.
Terrified by myself, the forbidding aspect of her surroundings, the unknown terrors of the law, she made no pretence of a fight. She fell upon her knees, imploring my clemency."
"So it was the Princess Nada who sent that note with the object of saving me?" asked Nello. There was a very tender look in his eyes as he spoke her name.
"I have known the Princess Nada from her childhood," said Beilski, speaking with some emotion. "Her mother, father, and I were of the same generation. The Princess Zouroff is a sweet woman--generous, kind-hearted, charitable; the daughter is the same. The old Prince was a ruffian in every sense of the word--drunken, dissolute, vicious. The son is a ruffian also, but he has missed a few of the paternal vices.
He is not a confirmed drunkard, although he takes more than is good for him, as is well known to his family and his intimates. And he is only moderately dissolute. He has one superiority over his father: he has got brains and ambition."
"How did such a fair flower spring from such a contaminated soil?"
asked Corsini wonderingly.
Beilski shrugged his shoulders. "Who can tell? A freak of nature, I suppose. But remember the mother is pure, and comes from a family without a taint. Well, to resume. When the maid had stammered forth her confession, for an instant a horrible suspicion a.s.sailed my mind.
We know Zouroff to be a traitor whom we have not yet succeeded in unmasking. Was his innocent-looking sister involved in his schemes?"
Nello leaned forward in a state of agitation. For an instant, on hearing that it was the Princess and not La Belle Quero who had sent that letter, a similar doubt had occurred to him.
"I took the bull by the horns. I sent a message by the maid that I would call upon her mistress that same day, that she was to inform her of what she had confessed."
"And you went and interviewed the Princess?" asked Corsini.
"Yes; fortunately I found her alone; her mother was in bed with a feverish cold. She was nervous and agitated, as was to be expected, but one moment"s glance at her face convinced me that she was no guilty woman, enmeshed with her own consent in her brother"s vile schemes."
The young man drew a deep breath of relief. He had always held the highest opinion of her character. There would be some satisfactory explanation forthcoming of her actions.
A little note of pomposity and self-congratulation crept into Beilski"s voice. "I need hardly tell you that an innocent and inexperienced girl like this was as wax in my hands. With a woman of Madame Quero"s experience, my task might have been more difficult."
"I can quite believe it," murmured Corsini.
"In five minutes I had the whole truth out of her. Well, perhaps, not quite the whole truth," admitted the General reluctantly, "for, woman-like, although she has no love for her brother, she did not want to give him away, to render certain the punishment which he richly deserves."
"And her story, your Excellency?" asked the young man eagerly.
"Briefly it was this. Madame Quero called upon her to report that there was a plot to decoy you and convey you to an unknown destination--she did not know, or pretended she did not know, your ultimate fate, neither did she know where the carriage was to start from; she was only sure that the first stoppage was to be at Pavlovsk.
This of course was Nada"s version. It at once occurred to me that these ladies, if they knew so much, would know a little more. They were not both of them ignorant, but, of course, one might be. Which was the ignorant one?"
"The Princess, of course," said Corsini at once. "La Belle Quero knew where the carriage started from, but did not want to implicate Zouroff, as it was drawn up so close to his residence. She pretended ignorance."
The General leaned back in his chair and laughed genially. He was very pleased with himself, for what he was about to relate was really his own master-stroke. It owed nothing to the more inventive genius of Golitzine.
"That is, of course, what would occur to you, what would occur to, I dare say, ninety-nine persons out of a hundred. I am the hundredth, and I have had great experience." The General spoke with an air of profound wisdom. "La Belle Quero had only certain suspicions, fostered by some random remark dropped by Zouroff in a moment of intense rage and irritation. As a matter of fact, she knew no details. She did not know of a carriage at all, and consequently she was ignorant of where it started from or where it was going to."
"The Princess, then----!" interrupted Nello, in a voice of the most intense surprise.
"The Princess, then----!" repeated Beilski. "I saw that poor little Nada"s story was lame and halting; of course I guessed the reason why.
I pressed her with the question why, if La Belle Quero, from whom she got her information, knew where the carriage was going to, she did not know where it started from. Both her answer and demeanour were too evasive to deceive me. I could not break her any more on the wheel; I saw she had had about as much as she could stand. I selected another victim."
"Madame Quero, of course," cried Corsini.
"Wrong again, my friend; you have not yet quite got the a.n.a.lytical faculty that makes a great detective. I had the maid before me again, this time more terrified than before. If I had stretched her on the rack, she could not have poured it forth more fully."
"And the outcome?" was Corsini"s eager question.
"What I had made up my mind was the fact. Zouroff is not the man to impart the details of his plans to any but his immediate instruments.
He imparted them neither to Quero nor his sister."
He related to Corsini what the reader already knows. The visit of the singer to the Princess, of her suspicion that a plot was on foot against the Italian, of her suggestion that Nada should inst.i.tute some inquiries in the Zouroff household, of the valet, Peter"s, confidence to Katerina, the Princess"s swift deductions from these revelations.
"I have gone farther," concluded the General. "I have interrogated that scoundrel, Peter, as to what he knows about his master"s general projects, and more especially your abduction. But I have not given poor little Katerina away, or the young Princess. I have led him to infer that I was acting on the confession of the two scoundrels we have got in custody."
"And what att.i.tude did he take?"
"At first, one of stupidity, complicated with sullen defiance. But towards the end of the interview, I could see that his heart was being softened. I told him to consider it carefully; full confession and a full pardon, or--the utmost rigour of the law."
"And he will at once tell Zouroff," suggested Corsini. "That is, if he is really loyal to the Prince."
Beilski shrugged his shoulders. "He may and he may not. I expect he will be thinking chiefly of his own skin. On the other hand, ruffians like the Prince have a remarkable knack of attracting loyalty. At any rate, it does not matter. In a couple of days I should have laid my hands on him for this matter alone--I have no doubt they would have taken you to some lonely place and finished you off--but I shall wait, if necessary, a little longer for the report of your visit to the villa. If that is what we expect it to be, we will have done with this gentleman, once and for all."
"Amen!" cried Corsini, fervently. In spite of his English upbringing, he had in him the true spirit of Italian revenge. He loved the Princess Nada, but for her brother, who would have taken his life, he had no mercy.
He walked home to his hotel, followed at an un.o.btrusive distance by his guards. His heart was singing happily within him, as a result of his interview with the bluff, but genial General.
He was grateful to La Belle Quero for her unselfish interference on his behalf: she had braved detection, Zouroff"s vengeance, on his account. When his lips were unsealed he would express to the singer his thanks.
But it was the Princess who had more fully schemed and plotted, set to work her woman"s wit, and ultimately triumphed on his behalf. Was it due to a kind pure woman"s compa.s.sion only, or--delicious thought--was she attracted to him as he was to her? Was it love that had stimulated her brain, urged her to that desperate measure of the anonymous note to the Chief of Police?
A letter was handed to him by the hall-porter as he entered the hotel.
He was told that it had been delivered by a shabbily-dressed man, who would not wait for his return.