"Yes, yes, I quite understand," said His Majesty very gravely.
"By returning here, by abandoning my _incognita_, I--I have been compelled to sacrifice my love," declared the girl in a low, faltering voice, her cheeks blanched, her mouth drawn hard, and her fine eyes filled with tears.
"Ah! Tattie! If what you have revealed to me be true, then the reason of Markoff"s unsatisfactory reports concerning, you is quite apparent,"
His Majesty said, slowly folding his arms as he stood in thought, a fine commanding figure with the jewelled double eagle at his throat flashing with a thousand fires.
"And so, Trewinnard," he added, turning to me, "all this is the reason why, more than once, you have given me those mysterious hints which have set me pondering."
"Yes, Sire," I replied. "You have been blinded by these clever adventurers surrounding you--that circle which, headed by Serge Markoff, is always so careful to prevent you from learning the truth. The intrigue they practise is most ingenious and far-reaching, ever securing their own advancement with fat emoluments at the expense of the oppressed nation. Their basic principle is to terrorise you--to keep the bogy of revolution constantly before Your Majesty, to discover plots, and by administrative process to send hundreds, nay thousands, into exile in those far-off Arctic wastes, or fill the prisons with suspects, more than two-thirds of whom are innocent, loyal and law-abiding citizens."
He turned suddenly and, pale with anger, struck his fist upon his table.
"There shall be no more exile by administrative process!" he cried, and seating himself, he drew a sheet of official paper before him, and for a few moments his quill squeaked rapidly over the paper.
Thus he wrote the ukase abolishing exile by administrative process--that law which the camarilla had so abused--and signed it with a flourish of his pen.
The first reform in Russia--a reform which meant the yearly saving of thousands of innocent lives, the preservation of the sanct.i.ty of every home throughout the great Empire, and which guaranteed to everyone in future, suspect or known criminal or Revolutionist, a fair and open trial--had been achieved.
Surely the little Grand d.u.c.h.ess, the madcap of the Romanoffs, had not sacrificed her great love in vain, even though while that Imperial ukase was being written she sat with bitter tears rolling slowly down her white cheeks.
CHAPTER THIRTY THREE.
DESCRIBES A MOMENTOUS AUDIENCE.
A dead silence fell in that small, business-like room, wherein the monarch, the hardest-working man in the Empire, transacted the complicated business of the great Russian nation.
Outside could be heard a sharp word of command, followed by the heavy tramp of soldiers and the roll of drums. The sentries were changing guard.
Slowly--very slowly--His Majesty placed a sheet of blotting-paper over the doc.u.ment he had written, and then turning to the tearful girl, asked:
"Will not this individual, Danilo Danilovitch, furnish me with proofs?
He is a Revolutionist, yet that is no reason why I should not see him.
From what you tell me, Markoff holds him in his power by constantly threatening to betray him to his comrades as a police-spy. I must see him. Where is he?"
"He has accompanied us from London, Your Majesty," was my reply. "I had some difficulty in a.s.suring him that he would obtain justice at Your Majesty"s hands."
"He is an a.s.sa.s.sin. He killed my brother Nicholas; yet it seems--if what you tell me be true--that Markoff compelled him to commit this crime."
"Without a doubt," was my reply.
"Then, Revolutionist or not, I will see him," and he touched the electric b.u.t.ton placed in the side of his writing-table.
A sentry appeared instantly, and at my suggestion His Majesty permitted me to go down the long corridor, at the end of which the dark, thin-faced man, in a rather shabby black suit, was sitting in a small ante-room, outside which stood a tall, statuesque Cossack sentry.
A few words of explanation, and somewhat reluctantly Danilovitch rose and followed me into the presence of the man he was ever plotting to kill.
The Emperor received him most graciously, and ordered him to be seated, saying:
"My niece here and Mr Trewinnard have been speaking of you, Danilo Danilovitch, and have told me certain astounding things."
The man looked up at his Sovereign, pale and frightened, and His Majesty, realising this, at once put him at his ease by adding: "I know that, in secret, you are the mysterious `One" who directs the revolutionary movement throughout the Empire, and the constant conspiracies directed against my own person. Well," he laughed, "I hope, Danilovitch, you will not find me so terrible as you have been led to expect, and, further, that when you leave here you will think a little better of the man whose duty it is to rule the Russian nation than you hitherto have done. Now," he asked, looking straight at the man, "are you prepared to speak with me openly and frankly, as I am prepared to speak to you?"
"I am, Your Majesty," he said.
"Then answer me a few questions," urged the Imperial autocrat. "First, tell me whether these constant conspiracies against myself--these plots for which so many hundreds are being banished to Siberia--are genuine ones formed by those who really desire to take my life?"
"No, Sire," was the answer. "The last genuine plot was the one in Samara, nearly two years ago. Your Majesty escaped only by a few seconds."
"When the railway line was blown up just outside the station; I remember," said the Emperor, with a grim smile. "Four of your fellow-conspirators were killed by their own explosives."
"That was the last genuine plot. All the recent ones have been suggested by General Markoff, head of the Secret Police."
"With your a.s.sistance?"
The man nodded in the affirmative.
"Then you betray your fellow-conspirators for payment--eh?"
"Because I am compelled. I, alas! took a false step once, and His Excellency the General has taken advantage of it ever since. He forces me to act according to his wishes, to conspire, to betray--to murder if necessity arises--because he knows how I dread the truth becoming known to the secret revolutionary committee, and how I fully realise the terrible fate which must befall me if the actual facts were ever revealed. The Terrorists entertain no sympathy with their betrayer."
"I quite understand that," remarked the Sovereign. And then, in gracious words, he closely questioned him regarding the a.s.sa.s.sination of the Grand Duke Peter outside the Opera House in Warsaw, and heard the ghastly truth of Markoff"s crime from the witness"s own lips.
"I read the letters which I secured from the Palace of the Grand Duke Nicholas," he admitted. "They were to the same effect as Your Majesty has said. In one of them His Excellency the General confessed his crime."
"You threw the bomb which killed my brother, the Grand Duke Nicholas?"
"It was intended to kill Her Highness the Grand d.u.c.h.ess," and he indicated Natalia, "and also the Englishman, Mr Trewinnard. The General was plotting the death of both of them, fearing that they knew his secret."
"And in England there was another conspiracy against them--eh?"
"Yes," replied the man known as the Shoemaker of Kazan. "But Mr Trewinnard and the Chief of Criminal Police, Ivan Hartwig, discovered me, and dared me to commit the outrage on pain of betrayal to my friends. Hence I have been between two stools--compelled by Markoff and defied by Hartwig. At last, in desperation, I sent an anonymous letter to Her Highness warning her, with the fortunate result that both she and her lover--a young Englishman named Drury--disappeared, and even the Secret Police were unable to discover their whereabouts. I did so in order to gain time, for I had no motive in taking Her Highness"s life, although if I refused to act I knew what the result must inevitably be."
"All this astounds me," declared the Emperor. "I never dreamed that I was being thus misled, or that Markoff was acting with such cunning and unscrupulousness against the interests of the dynasty and the nation. I see the true situation. You, Danilo Danilovitch, are a Revolutionist-- not by conviction, but because of the drastic action of the Secret Police, the real rulers of Russia. Therefore, read that," and he took from his table the Imperial ukase and handed it to him.
When he had read it he returned it to the Emperor"s hand, and murmured:
"Thank G.o.d! All Russia will praise Your Majesty for your clemency. It is the reform for which we have been craving for the past twenty years-- fair trial, and after conviction a just punishment. But we have, alas!
only had arrest and prompt banishment without trial. Every man and woman in Russia has. .h.i.therto been at the mercy of any police-spy or any secret enemy."
"My only wish is to give justice to the nation," declared the Sovereign, his dark, thoughtful eyes turned upon the dynamitard whose word was law to every Terrorist from Archangel to Odessa, and from Wirballen to Ekaterinburg.
"And, Sire, on behalf of the Party of the People"s Will I beg to thank you for granting it to us," said the man, whose keen, highly-intelligent face was now slightly flushed.
"What I have heard to-day from my niece"s lips, from Mr Trewinnard and from yourself, has caused the gravest thoughts to arise within me," His Majesty declared after a slight pause. "Injustice has, I see, been done on every hand, and the Secret Police has been administered by one who, it seems, is admittedly an a.s.sa.s.sin. It is now for me to remedy that-- and to do so by drastic measures."
"And the whole nation will praise Your Majesty," Danilovitch replied.
"I am a Revolutionist, it is true, but I have been forced--forced against my will--to formulate these false plots for the corrupt Secret Police to unearth. I declare most solemnly to Your Majesty that my position as leader of this Party and at the same time an _agent-provocateur_ has been a source of constant danger and hourly terror. In order to hide my secret, I was unfortunately compelled to commit murder--to kill the woman I loved. She discovered the truth, and would have exposed me to the vengeance which the Party never fails to mete out to its betrayers. Markoff had given me my liberty and immunity from arrest in exchange for my services to him. He held me in his power, body and soul, and, because of that, I was forced to strike down the woman I loved," he added, with a catch in his voice. "And--and--"
he said, standing before the Emperor, "I crave Your Majesty"s clemency.