I lay with every nerve strained to its utmost tension, listening for the least movement on the part of the maddened woman which might indicate she was about to stab me then and there.

In the silence that followed, if she did not hear the beating of my heart it was only because her own stormy emotions had rendered her deaf and blind to everything else.

For a time her rapid breathing continued to warm my uncovered neck. Then she snapped-to the locket and let it fall, and rose from my side to pace the floor of the room with swift, irregular steps.

Fauchette, who must have been anxious to know how I was faring, now came back without waiting to be summoned.

“Well?” the Princess demanded, halting in her promenade.

“Gregory has gone for M. Petrovitch, Madame. Is there anything I can do?”

“I have tried every restorative,” came the answer. “See if you can detect any signs of life.”

The last command seemed to come as an afterthought. No doubt, Sophia wished to test her work before Petrovitch arrived.

I was encouraged to think that she had no immediate intention of killing me; and as the maid bent over me I contrived to give her hand a reassuring squeeze.

“He is quite dead, Madame,” the girl said, turning away. “Would you like to have the body carried into another room?”

“No. Wait till M. Petrovitch comes,” her mistress replied. “You can go.”

As my assistant withdrew I again became on the alert for any dangerous move on the part of the Princess.

It was not long before I was conscious that the room had grown darker.

I gathered that Sophia had switched off some of the lights in order to make it more difficult for Petrovitch to detect her fraud, and again I took courage.

Some muttered words helped me to understand the plan of the desperate woman.

“I will give him one chance. He shall choose. Men do not die for love in these days.”

There was little doubt that she intended to lock me up in her oratory and hold me a prisoner till I consented to sacrifice my faith to her Japanese rival.

Satisfied that there was little risk of any immediate violence, I waited calmly for the arrival of Sophia’s colleague, or master.

The head of the Manchurian Syndicate lost no time on the way. Very soon I heard the door open and the familiar voice, with its slightly affected accent, saying,

“Permit me to offer you the expression of my sincere regrets, dear Princess! – And my sincere congratulations,” he added in a more business-like tone, as the door closed again.

A sigh was the only audible response.

“It has cost you something, I can see,” the man’s voice resumed soothingly. “That fact gives you a still stronger claim on our gratitude. I confess I began to fear seriously that you were deceiving us, and that would have been very dangerous.”

Another obscure sound, between a sigh and a sob, from the woman.

“Now we can proceed with light hearts. Within three months from now Russia and Great Britain will be at war. I do not mind answering for it. There was only one man in Europe who could have prevented it, and he lies there!”

“You would have it so! I still say it would have been enough to imprison him somewhere.”

“You talk foolishly, believe me, Princess. A man like that is not to be imprisoned. There is no jailer in the world who would venture to undertake to keep the famous A. V. under lock and key.”

“I would have undertaken it,” came the answer. “I would have locked him in my oratory, the key of which never leaves my bosom.”

“Nevertheless if it was important to that man to steal it from you, it would not remain in your bosom very long.”

A startled cry interrupted the speaker, and told me that Sophia had made the fatal discovery of the loss of her key.

I held my breath in the most dreadful suspense. Everything now depended on this woman. If she allowed the least hint, I knew that Petrovitch would never leave the room without at least an attempt to change my supposed trance into death.

Fortunately the Princess was equal to the emergency. I heard her give a slight laugh.

“I am punished for my assurance,” she confessed. “I am not quite hardened, as you know; and when I realized that M. V – was actually dead, I was obliged to pray for him. I have left the key in the door.”

“Go and fetch it, then.”

The tone in which these words were spoken was harsh. I heard Sophia going out of the room, and in an instant, with a single bound, as it seemed, the man was leaning over me, feeling my pulse, listening for my heart, and testing whether I breathed.

“If I had brought so much as a knife with me, I would have made sure,” I heard him mutter to himself.

Fortunately Sophia’s absence did not last ten seconds. She must have snatched up the first key that came to hand, that of a jewel-box most likely, and hurried back with it.

Petrovitch seemed to turn away from me with reluctance.

“You doubt me, it appears,” came in angry tones from the Princess.

“I doubt everybody,” was the cool rejoinder. “You were in love with this fellow.”

“You think so? Then look at this.”

I felt the locket being picked up, and heard the click of the tiny spring.

A coarse laugh burst from the financier.

“So that is it! Woman’s jealousy is safer than her sworn word, after all. Now I believe he

dead.”

The Princess made no reply.

Presently the man spoke again.

“This must be kept a secret among ourselves, you understand. The truth is, I have exceeded my instructions a little. A certain personage only authorized detention. It appears he is like you in having a certain tenderness for this fellow – why, I can’t think. At any rate his manner was rather alarming when we hinted that a coffin made the safest straight-jacket.”

It was impossible for me to doubt that it was the Kaiser whom this villain had insulted by offering to have me assassinated. I thanked Wilhelm II. silently for his chivalrous behavior. M. Petrovitch could have known little of the proud Hohenzollern whom he tempted.

At the same time, it was a source of serious concern for me to know that, just as I had learned that my real opponent was my friend the Kaiser, so he in turn had acquired the knowledge that he had me against him.

It had become a struggle, no longer in the dark, between the most resourceful of Continental sovereigns and myself, and that being so, I realized that I could not afford to rest long on my oars.

From the deep breathing of the Princess, I surmised that she was choking down the rage she must have felt at the other’s cynical depravity. For Sophia, though capable of committing a murder out of jealousy perhaps, was yet incapable of killing for reward.

“Well,” I heard Petrovitch say in the tone of one who is taking his leave, “I must send some one ’round to remove our friend.”

“Do not trouble, if you please. I will see to the funeral,” came in icy tones from the Princess.

“What, still sentimental! Be careful, my good Sophia Y – , you will lose your value to us if you give way to such weaknesses.”

I heard his steps move across the carpeted floor, and then with startling suddenness, the words came out:

“Curse me if I can believe he

dead!”

My blood ran cold. But it turned out to be only a passing exclamation. At the end of what seemed to me minutes – they can only have been seconds – the footsteps moved on, and the door opened and closed.

“Thank God!” burst from Sophia.

Her next words were plainly an apostrophe to myself.

“So you did not trust me after all!”

I was within an ace of opening my eyes on the supposition that she had found me out, when I was reassured by her adding, this time to herself,

“He must have done it when I fainted!”

I saw that she was referring to my theft of the key.

There was a soft rustle of silk on the floor, and I felt her hands searching in my pockets for the stolen key.

“Fool! To think that I could outwit him!” she murmured to herself at last.

She had taken some time to learn the lesson, however.

CHAPTER XXIII

A RESURRECTION AND A GHOST

It was soon evident that the Princess Y – had taken her new maid into her confidence to a certain extent.

She must have rung for Fauchette without my hearing anything, for presently the door opened again, and I heard my assistant’s voice.

As the result of a hurried consultation between the two women, in which Fauchette played to perfection the part of a devoted maid who is only desirous to anticipate the wishes of her mistress, it was decided to wheel the sofa on which I lay into the oratory, and to bring the wax dummy into the Princess’s bedroom, to lie in state till the next day.

The arrangement did not take long to carry out.

Partly from what I was able to overhear, and partly from the report afterward furnished to me by Fauchette, I am able to relate succinctly what took place.

To begin with, I was left in the oratory, while the counterfeit corpse was duly arranged in the adjoining room.

Unable to lock me in the smaller apartment, Sophia declared her intention of locking both the outer doors of the bedroom, one of which gave on a corridor, while the other, as the reader is aware, opened into the boudoir where the previous scene had taken place.

The Princess retained one of these keys herself, entrusting the other to the maid, of course with the strictest injunctions as to its use.

To keep up appearances before the household, the Princess arranged to pass the next few nights in another room on the same floor, which usually served as a guest chamber.

It was explained to the servants that the death which had occurred had upset the nerves of their mistress, and rendered her own suite of rooms distasteful to her for the present.

Fauchette, who thus became my jailer, brought me a supply of cold food and wine during the night. I had part of this provision under the altar of the oratory, to serve me during the following day.

My cataleptic condition was supposed to endure for nearly twenty-four hours. The enforced seclusion was intensely irritating to a man of my temperament; but I could not evade it without revealing to Sophia that I had heard her confession, and thereby inflicting a deadly wound on a woman who loved me.

Meanwhile the arrangements for my funeral had been pressed on.

Already a telegram had appeared in the London papers announcing the sudden and unexpected death from heart-failure of the well-known English philanthropist, Mr. Melchisedak Sterling. One or two of the journals commented on the fact of Mr. Sterling’s death having taken place while he was on a mission of peace to the Russian capital, and expressed a hope that his death would have a chastening effect on the War Party in Petersburg.

My friend, the editor of the Peace Review, very generously sent a wreath, which arrived too late for the funeral but was laid on my grave.

Unfortunately these newspaper announcements were taken seriously by my exalted employers, as well as by the enemies whom I wished to deceive, but this could not be helped.

By noon the undertaker’s men had arrived with my coffin. The Princess played upon their ignorance of English customs and burial rites to pretend that the work of coffining must be done by women’s hands. In this way she and Fauchette were able to enclose the dummy in its wooden shell, leaving to the men only the task of screwing down the lid.

The burial took place in the English cemetery. I am glad to say that the Princess contrived to avoid the mockery of a religious service by alleging that Mr. Sterling had belonged to a peculiar sect – the Quakers, I fancy – which holds such ceremonies to be worldly and unnecessary.

I may add that I have since visited my grave, which is still to be seen in a corner of the cemetery. It is marked by a stone slab with an inscription in English.

In the afternoon the faithful Fauchette persuaded her mistress to go out for a drive, to soothe her over-strained nerves.

Before quitting the house, the Princess came in to take a last look at me.

She lingered minute after minute, as though with some premonition that our next meeting would be under widely different circumstances.

To herself, I heard her whisper, sighing softly:

“Andreas! O Andreas! If I could sleep, or thou couldst never wake!”

She crept away, and the better to secure me locked both the bedroom doors herself, and carried off the keys.

On her return, two hours later, Sophia, with a look that told the watchful Fauchette of her uneasiness, hurried straight up-stairs, toward the door of the little oratory.

She found it locked from the outside, with the key in the door.

It had cost me something to break my pledge to the Princess Y – that I would give her my new address before leaving her.

But her unfortunate discovery of the portrait I wore around my neck and her plainly-declared intention to hold me a prisoner till she could shake my fidelity, had rendered it necessary for me to meet treachery with treachery.

The secret service, it must always be borne in mind, has its own code of honor, differing on many points from that obtaining in other careers, but perhaps stricter on the whole.

For instance, I can lay my hand on my heart and declare that I have never done either of two things which are done every day by men holding high offices and high places in the world’s esteem. I have never taken a secret commission. And I have never taken advantage of my political information to gamble in stocks.

The manner of my escape was simplicity itself.

My assistant had not come to live with the Princess without making some preparations for the part she was to play, and these included the bringing with her of a bunch of skeleton keys, fully equal to the work of opening any ordinary lock.

As soon as her mistress was safely out of the way, Fauchette came to receive my instructions.

I told her that I did not intend to wait for my jailer’s return. We discussed the best way for me to slip out, without obstruction from the servants, and I decided to take advantage of the superstition of the Russian illiterate class, by enacting the part of my own ghost.

The report that I had been buried without any funeral service had already reached the household, and had prepared them for any supernatural manifestation.

Fauchette first brought me a little powdered chalk, with which I smeared my face. I then put on a long flowing cloak and a sombrero hat, part of the wardrobe accumulated by the Princess in the course of her gaieties.

I slipped a damp sponge into my pocket and directed the girl to lead the way.

She went down-stairs a few yards in front of me, turned into the servants’ part of the house and threw open the back door, which led out into a courtyard giving on a street used only by tradesmen’s carts. At this hour of the day it was deserted.

I followed cautiously in Fauchette’s wake, and got as far as the back door without meeting any interruption.

But at that point, the porter, who must have been roused by an unfamiliar step – though I understand he swore afterward that the passage of the ghost had been absolutely noiseless – came out and stood in the doorway.

Without hesitating for an instant I assumed an erect posture and advanced swiftly toward him with my whitened face well displayed.

The fellow gave vent to a half-articulate call which died down in his throat, and bolted back into his room uttering yell after yell.

Fifteen seconds later I was out in the street, sponging the chalk from my face.

And five minutes after that I was comfortably seated in a hired droshky, on my way to a certain little house in the seafaring quarter of the city, which possessed, among other advantages, that of commanding an exceedingly fine view of the Admiralty Pier.

CHAPTER XXIV

A SECRET EXECUTION

I now come to a part of my chronicle which I plainly foresee must expose me to grave criticism.

To that criticism it is no part of my purpose to attempt any reply.

In the long run, I have found, men’s minds are not much affected by argument and advocacy. Facts tell their own story, and men’s judgments are usually the result of their personal prejudices.

For that reason I shall confine myself to relating facts. I have already told the story of my murder – for such it was in the intent – by Petrovitch. I shall now tell the story of the justice meted out by me on the assassin.

As soon as I was safely lodged in my house on the Alexander Quay, I despatched my assistant, a clever young Frenchman named Breuil, with a message to the promoter of the Manchurian Syndicate – the real moving spirit of that War clique in which even the bellicose grand dukes had only secondary parts.

The wording of the message had been carefully calculated to arouse curiosity, but not apprehension.

“The agent of a foreign Power,” Breuil was instructed to say to this self-styled patriot, “with very large funds at his disposal, desires to see you in strict secrecy.”

The bait took. Petrovitch, naturally concluding that he was to be offered a heavy bribe for some act of treachery to Russia, greedily accepted the invitation.

The infatuated man did not take even the ordinary precaution of asking for guarantees. He consented to accompany Breuil at once, merely asking how far he had to go. This recklessness was the result of his supposed triumphant crime. Believing that I was safely interred in the English cemetery, he thought there was no one left for him to fear.

On the way he did his best to extract some information out of my assistant. But Breuil returned the same answer to all his questions and hints:

“I am under orders not to converse with you, monsieur.”

The doomed man was in good spirits as the droshky put him down at the door of my house.

“Decidedly an out-of-the-way retreat!” he commented gaily. “I should hardly be able to find my way here again without your assistance!”

The silent Breuil merely bowed, as he proceeded to open the street door with a latch key.

Perhaps Petrovitch had been a little more nervous than he allowed to appear. When he noticed that his escort simply closed the door on the latch, without locking or bolting it further, he said in a tone of relief:

“You are not much afraid of being visited by the police, I see.”

Breuil, as silent as ever, led the way into a back parlor, overlooking the Neva, where I was waiting to receive my visitor.

The room was plainly furnished as a study, and I had placed myself in an arm-chair facing the window, so that my back was turned to the door as Petrovitch entered.

I pretended to be writing furiously, as a pretext for not turning my head till the visitor had seated himself.

Breuil said quietly, “M. Petrovitch is here,” and went out of the room.

As the door closed I tossed away my pen and turned around, facing my assassin.

“I am pleased to see you, M. Petrovitch.”

“Monsieur V – !”

I thought he would have lost his senses. His whole countenance changed. He clung to his chair, and his eyes were fixed on me with an expression of panic.

So complete was his collapse that he did not attempt to speak or excuse himself. I saw that he was hardly in a condition to listen to anything I had to say.

“I fear you are unwell, M. Petrovitch. Allow me to offer you a little brandy.”

The wretched man watched me with bewildered looks, as I took a bottle and glasses from a cupboard and helped first him and then myself.

“It is quite wholesome, I assure you.”

As I said the words I raised my own glass to my lips and sipped.

A choking cry escaped from the author of the war. He seized the glass I had set before him and feverishly drained it.

I saw that he was burning to know by what means I had escaped the fate prepared for me. But I had no object in gratifying his curiosity, and mere boasting is not a weakness of mine.

Steadfastly preserving the tone of a business interview between men who understand each other, I went on to say:

“I am here, as you know, in the joint interests of England and Japan.”

My murderer nodded faintly. I could see him making a tremendous effort to control his nerves, and enter into conversation with me on my own terms.

“I think I should be glad of a little more brandy. Thank you! – I am not at all myself.”

I shook my head compassionately.

“You should be careful to avoid too much excitement,” I said. “Any sudden shock is bad for a man with your nerves.”

The promoter gasped. The situation was clearly beyond him.

“You,” I went on in my most matter-of-fact tone, “on the contrary, are acting on behalf of Germany.”

“Who says so!” He was beginning to speak fiercely; but his eye met mine, and the words died on his lips.

“We will say I dreamed it, if you like,” I responded drily. “I have very remarkable dreams sometimes, and learn a great deal from them.

“To confine ourselves to business. I have caused the sailing of this Baltic Fleet to be put off, because – ”

“You – have caused it!”

The interruption burst from him in spite of himself.

I affected to shrug my shoulders with a certain annoyance.

“Your opinion of my powers does not seem to be a very high one, unfortunately,” I remarked with irony. “It would be better if you accepted me as a serious antagonist, believe me.”

Petrovitch lowered his eyes in confusion, as he muttered,

“I apologize, Monsieur V – . I have blundered, as I now perceive.”

“Let us resume. I was about to say that I had prevented the sailing of this fleet, because I feared that its voyage might be marked by some incident likely to bring Great Britain and Russia into collision.”

The financier raised his head and watched me keenly.

“You, yourself, M. Petrovitch, have been active, I believe, in preparing the mind of the Czar and the Russian public for something of the sort. Doubtless you have not done so without very good grounds.”

“My information leads me to think that a flotilla of torpedo boats is being kept ready in the English ports for a night attack on our fleet during its progress through the North Sea.”

I smiled disdainfully.

“That is a false report. I have asked you to call here in the hope that I might find you ready to assist me in discrediting it.”

The Russian continued to watch me out of his narrow eyes.

“And, also,” I added, “to assist me in preventing any attempt to give color to it.”

“I am not sure that I understand you, Monsieur V – .”

“That is quite possible. I will speak more plainly. There are some prophets who take a little trouble to make their prophesies come true. I wish to know whether you and your friends have determined that this particular prophesy shall come true – perhaps to fulfill it yourselves?”

Petrovitch frowned and compres