Chapter One.
The Madcap

“M’sieur Colin Trewinnard?”

“That is my name, Captain Stoyanovitch,” I replied in surprise. “You know it quite well.”

“The usual formality, mon cher ami!”

And the tall, handsome equerry in the white uniform of the Imperial Guard laughed lightly, clicked his heels together, and handed me a letter which I saw bore the Imperial cipher upon its black seal.

“From His Imperial Majesty the Emperor,” he added in Russian.

I held my breath. Had the blow fallen?

With eager, trembling fingers I tore open the envelope and found therein a note in French, merely the words:

“His Imperial Majesty the Emperor commands Mr Colin Trewinnard to private audience to-day at 3:30 p.m.

“St. Petersburg, June 28th.”

“Very well,” I managed to reply. “Tell Colonel Polivanoff that – that I shall be there. Have a cigarette?” and I handed him the silver box of Bogdanoffs which were the common property of the staff of the Embassy.

Having flung himself into a big easy chair, he stretched out his long legs and lit up.

“Well,” I said, leaning against the edge of the writing-table, “I suppose the Emperor returned from Odessa early this morning – eh?”

“Yes,” replied the elegant officer, in English. “Thank Heaven, the journey is at last over. Ah! what a tour of the Empire! At Orel we held the great review, then on to Saratov, where there were more manoeuvres and a review. Afterwards we went down the Volga to Astrakhan to unveil the new statue to Peter the Great; then Kertch, more manoeuvres, and into the Crimea for a week’s rest. Afterwards across to Odessa, and then, by a three nights’ journey, back here to Petersburg. Faugh! How we all hate that armoured train!”

“But it is surely highly necessary, my dear Stoyanovitch,” I said. “With this abominable wave of anarchism which has spread over Europe, it behoves the Secret Police to take every precaution for His Majesty’s safety!”

“Ah! my dear friend,” laughed the equerry. “I tell you it is not at all pleasant to travel when one expects every moment that the train will be blown up. One’s sleeping-berth, though covered with a down quilt, is but a bed of torture in such conditions.”

“Yes,” I said. “But His Majesty – how does he bear it?”

“The Emperor has nerves of iron. He is the least concerned of any of us. But, mon Dieu! I would not be in his shoes for the wealth of all the Russias.”

“What – more conspiracies?” I exclaimed.

“Conspiracies!” sighed the Captain. “Mon Dieu! A fresh one is discovered by the political police every week. Only the day before the Emperor left for the country he found among the Ministers’ daily reports upon the table in his private cabinet an anonymous letter telling him that he will meet with a tragic end on the sixth of the present month. How this letter got there nobody knows. His Majesty is seldom out of temper, but I never saw him so furiously angry before.”

“It is unfortunate,” I said. “Apparently he cannot trust even his immediate entourage.”

“Exactly,” answered the dark-haired handsome man. “The constant reports of General Markoff regarding the revolutionists must be most alarming. And yet he preserves an outward calm that is truly remarkable. But, by the way,” he added, “His Majesty, before I left the Palace with that letter, summoned me and gave me a message for you – a verbal one.”

“Oh! What was that?”

“He told me to say that he sent to you a word – let me see, I wrote it down lest I should forget,” and pulling down his left shirt cuff, he spelt:

“B-a-t-h-i-l-d-i-s.”

“Thank you,” I replied briefly.

“What does it mean? Is it some password?” Ivan Stoyanovitch asked with considerable curiosity.

“That’s scarcely a fair question,” I said in rebuke.

“Ah! of course,” he replied, with a touch of sarcasm. “I ought not to have asked you. Pardon me, my friend. I forgot that you enjoy His Majesty’s confidence – that – ”

“Not at all,” I protested. “I am but a humble attaché of a foreign Embassy. It is not likely that I am entrusted with the secrets of Russia.”

“Not with those of Russia, but those of the Emperor personally. Dachkoff was discussing you at the Turf Club one night not long ago.”

“That’s interesting,” I laughed. “And what had the old man to say?”

“Oh, nothing of a very friendly nature. But, you know, he never has a good word to say for anybody.”

“Gamblers seldom have. I hear he lost ten thousand roubles to Prince Savinski at the Union the night before last.”

“I heard it was more,” and the long-legged equerry leaned back his head and watched the blue rings of cigarette smoke slowly ascend to the ceiling of the room, through the long window of which was a view across the Neva, with the grim Fortress of Peter and Paul opposite. “But,” he went on, “we were speaking of these constant conspiracies. Though we have been back in Petersburg only a few hours, Markoff has already reported a desperate plot. The conspirators, it seems, had bored a tunnel and placed a mine under the Nevski, close to the corner of the Pushkinskaya, and it was arranged to explode it as the Emperor’s carriage passed early this morning on the way from the Nicholas station. But Markoff – the ever-watchful Markoff – discovered the projected attempt only at eleven o’clock last night – two hours before we passed. There have been thirty-three arrests up to the present, including a number of girl students.”

“Markoff is really a marvel,” I declared. “He scents a conspiracy anywhere.”

“And his spies are everywhere. Markoff takes a good deal of the credit, but it is his agents who do the real work. He has saved the Emperor’s life on at least a dozen occasions.”

I said nothing. I was thinking over the word – a very significant word – which the Emperor had sent me by his equerry. To me, that word meant a very great deal.

Our Ambassador, Sir Harding Lowe, being at home in England on leave, the Honourable Claude Saunderson, our Councillor of Embassy, was acting as Chargé d’Affaires. As far as we knew the political horizon was calm enough, save the dark little war cloud which perpetually hovers over the Balkans and grows darker each winter. The German negotiations with Russia had been concluded, and the foreign outlook appeared more serene than it had been for many months.

Yet within the great Winter Palace there was unrest and trouble. Jealousy, hatred and all uncharitableness were rife amid the Tzar’s immediate entourage, while the spirit of revolution was spreading daily with greater significance.

Within the past twelve months the two Prime Ministers, Semenoff and Mouravieff, had been assassinated by bombs, five governors of provinces had met with violent deaths, and eight chiefs of police of various cities had fallen victims of the revolutionists, who had frankly and openly vowed to take the life of the Tzar himself.

Was it any wonder, then, that the Emperor lived in bomb-proof rooms both in Petersburg and Tzarskoie-Selo, as well as at Gatchina; that he never slept in the same bed twice, that all food served to him was previously tasted, that he never gave audience without a loaded revolver lying upon the table before him, and that he surrounded himself by hordes of police-agents and spies? Surely none could envy him such a life of constant apprehension and daily terror; for twice in a month had bombs been thrown at his carriage, while five weeks before he had had both horses killed by an explosion in Moscow and only escaped death by a sheer miracle.

True, the revolutionists were unusually active at that moment, and the throne of Russia had become seriously menaced. Any other but a man of iron constitution and nerves of steel would surely have been driven to lunacy by the constant terror in which he was forced to exist. Yet, though he took ample precaution, he never betrayed the slightest anxiety, a fact which held everyone amazed. He was a true Russian, an autocrat of dogged courage, quick decision, always forceful and impelling, a faithful friend, but a bitter and revengeful enemy; a born ruler and a manly Emperor in every sense of the word.

“The Grand Duchess Natalia has been with the Emperor. Did she return with you this morning?” I inquired.

“Yes,” drawled the equerry. “She’s been admired everywhere, as usual, and half our staff are over head and ears in love with her. She’s been flirting outrageously.”

“Then half your staff are fools,” I exclaimed bluntly.

“Ah, my dear Trewinnard, she is so sweet, so very charming, so exquisite, so entirely unlike the other girls at Court – so delightfully unconventional.”

“A little too unconventional to suit some – if all I hear be true,” I remarked with a smile.

“You know her, of course. She’s an intimate friend of yours. I overheard her one day telling the Emperor what an excellent tennis player you were.”

“Well, I don’t fancy His Majesty interests himself very much in tennis,” I laughed. “He has other, and far more important, matters to occupy his time – the affairs of his great nation.”

“Natalia, or Tattie, as they call her in the Imperial circle, is his favourite niece. Nowadays she goes everywhere with him, and does quite a lot of his most private correspondence – that which he does not even trust to Calitzine.”

“Then the Emperor is more friendly towards Her Imperial Highness than before – eh?” I asked, for truth to tell I was very anxious to satisfy myself upon this point.

“Yes. She has been forgiven for that little escapade in Moscow.”

“What escapade?” I asked, feigning surprise.

“What escapade?” my friend echoed. “Why, you know well enough! I’ve heard it whispered that it was owing to your cleverness as a diplomat that the matter was so successfully hushed up – and an ugly affair it was, too. The suicide of her lover.”

“That’s a confounded lie!” I said quickly. “He did not commit suicide at all. At most, he left Russia with a broken heart, and that is not usually a fatal malady.”

“Well, you needn’t get angry about it, my dear fellow,” complained my friend. “The affair is successfully hushed up, and I fancy she’s got a lot to thank you for.”

“Not at all,” I declared. “I know that you fellows have coupled my name with hers, just because I’ve danced with her a few times at the Court balls, and I’ve been shooting at her father’s castle away in Samara. But I assure you my reputation as the little Grand Duchess’s intimate friend is entirely a mythical one.” Captain Stoyanovitch only smiled incredulously, stretched out his long legs and shrugged his shoulders.

“Well,” I went on, “has she been very terrified about all these reports of conspiracies?”

“Frightened out of her life, poor child! And who would not be?” he asked. “We didn’t know from one hour to another that we might not all be blown into the air. Everywhere the railway was lined by Cossacks, of course. Such a demonstration is apt to lend an air of security, but, alas! there is no security with the very Ministry undermined by revolution, as it is.”

I sighed. What he said was, alas! too true. Russia, at that moment, was in very evil case, and none knew it better than we, the impartial onlookers at the British Embassy.

The warm June sun fell across the rather faded carpet of that sombre old-fashioned room with its heavy furniture, which was my own sanctum, and as the smart captain of the Imperial Guard lolled back picturesquely in the big armchair I looked at him reflectively.

They were strange thoughts which flooded my brain at that moment – thoughts concerning that pretty, high-born young lady whom we had just been discussing, the girl to whom, he declared, His Majesty entrusted the greatest secrets of the throne.

Stoyanovitch was an extremely elegant and somewhat irresponsible person, and the fact that the Emperor had allowed the Grand Duchess Natalia to write his private letters did not strike me as the actual truth. The Tzar was far too cautious to entrust the secrets of a nation to a mere girl who was certainly known to be greatly addicted to the gentle pastime of flirtation.

Whatever the equerry told us, we at the Embassy usually added the proverbial grain of salt. Indeed, the diplomat at any post abroad learns to believe nothing which he hears, and only half he actually sees.

But the Emperor had sent me, by the mouth of that smart young officer, the word “Bathildis” – which was an ancient woman’s Christian name – and to me it conveyed a secret message, an announcement which held me in surprise and apprehension.

What could have happened?

I dreaded to think.