Part 19 (2/2)
The Count laughed.
”Even I could not protect you to-night,” he exclaimed dryly, ”no--whatever is to be done must be done to-morrow. But does not that prove to you what eyes and ears these people have. Here we left London as secretly as a man on a love affair. With the single exception of our friend at Hampstead, not a human being should have known of our departure or our destination. And yet we are not three hours in this place before this girl is outside our hotel, as well aware that we have arrived as we are ourselves. That is what baffles our police. They cannot contend with miracles. They are only human, and I tell you that these people are more than human.”
Alban, still peering down into the press in the hope that he might see Lois' face again, confessed that he could offer no explanation whatever.
”They told me the same thing in London,” he said, ”but I did not believe them. Old Boriskoff used to boast that he knew of things which had happened in Warsaw before the Russian Government. They seem to have spies in every street and every house. If Lois' presence is not a coincidence--”
”My dear fellow, are you also a believer in coincidence--the idle excuse of men who will not reason. Forgive me, but I think very little of coincidence. Just figure the chances against such a meeting as this.
Would it not run into millions--your first visit to Warsaw; n.o.body expecting you; n.o.body knowing your name in the city--and here is the girl waiting under your window before you have changed your clothes. Oh, no, I will have nothing to do with coincidence. These people certainly knew that we had left England--they have been expecting us; they will do their best to baffle us. Yes, and that means that we run some danger. I must think of it--I must see the Chief of the Police to-night. It would be foolish to neglect all reasonable precautions.”
Alban looked at him with surprise.
”None of those people will do me an injury,” he exclaimed, ”and you, Count, why should you fear them?”
The Count lighted a cigarette very deliberately. ”There may be reasons,” he said--and that was all.
Had he told the whole truth, revealed the secrets of his work during the last three years, Alban would have understood very well what those reasons were. A shrewder agent of the Government, a more discreet zealous official of the secret service, did not exist. His very bonhomie and good-fellows.h.i.+p had hitherto been his surest defence against discovery. Men spoke of him as the great gambler and a fine sportsman.
The Revolutionaries had been persuaded to look upon him as their friend.
Some day they would learn the truth--and then, G.o.d help him. Meanwhile, the work was well enough. He found it even more amusing than making love and a vast deal more exciting than big-game hunting.
”Yes,” he repeated anon, ”There may be reasons, but it is a little too late to remember them. I am sending over to the Bureau now. If the Chief is there, he will be able to help me. Of course, you will see or hear from this girl again. These people would deliver a letter if you locked yourself up in an iron safe. They will communicate with you in the morning and we must make up our minds what to do. That is why I want advice.”
”If you take mine,” said Alban quietly, ”you will permit me to see her at once. I am the last person in all Warsaw whom Lois Boriskoff will desire to injure.”
”Am I to understand, then--but no, it would be impossible. Forgive me even thinking of it. I had really imagined for a moment that you might be her lover.”
Alban's face flushed crimson.
”She was my little friend in London--she will be the same in Warsaw, Count.”
Count Sergius bowed as though he readily accepted this simple explanation and apologized for his own thoughts. A shrewd man of the world, he did not believe a word of it, however. These two, boy and girl together, had been daily a.s.sociates in the slums of London. They had shared their earnings and their pleasures and pa.s.sed for those who would be man and wife presently. This Richard Gessner had told him when they discussed the affair, and he remembered it to his great satisfaction.
For if Alban were Lois Boriskoff's lover, then might he venture even where the police were afraid to go.
”I will talk it all over with the Chief,” the Count exclaimed abruptly; ”you have had a long day and are better in bed. Don't stand on any ceremony, but please go directly you feel inclined.”
Alban did not demur for he was tired out and that was the truth of it.
In his own room he recalled the question the Count had put to him and wondered that it had so distressed him. Why had his cheeks tingled and the words stumbled upon his lips because he had been called Lois Boriskoff's lover? It used not to be so when they walked Union Street together and all the neighbors regarded the engagement as an accomplished fact. He had never resented such a charge then--what had happened that he should resent it now? Was it the long weeks of temptation he had suffered in Anna Gessner's presence? Had the world of riches so changed him that any mention of the old time could make him ashamed? He knew not what to think--the blood rushed to his cheeks again and his heart beat quickly when he remembered that but for Count Sergius's visit to Hampstead, he might have been Anna's betrothed to-day.
In this he was, as ever, entirely candid with himself, neither condoning his faults nor accusing himself blindly. There had been nothing of the humbler realities of love in his relations with Richard Gessner's daughter; none of the superb spirit of self-sacrifice; none of those fine ideals which his boyhood had desired to set up. He had wors.h.i.+pped her beauty--so much he readily admitted; her presence had ever been potent to quicken his blood and claim the homage of his senses; but of that deeper understanding and mutual sympathy by which love is born she had taught him nothing. Why this should have been so, he could not pretend to say. Her father's riches and the glamour of the great house may have had not a little to do with it. Alban had always seemed to stand apart from all which the new world showed to him. He felt that he had no t.i.tle to a place there, no just claim at all to those very favors his patron thrust upon him so lavishly.
He was as a man escaped from a prison whose bars were of gold--a prison whereof the jailer had been a beautiful and capricious woman. Here in Warsaw he discovered a new world; but one that seemed altogether familiar. All this clamor of the streets, this going to and fro of people, the roar of traffic, the shriek of whistles, the ringing of bells--had he not known them all in London when Lois was his friend and old Paul his neighbor? There had been many Poles by Thrawl Street and the harsh music of their tongue came to him as an old friend. It is true that he was housed luxuriously, in a palace built for millionaires; but he had the notion that he would not long continue there and that a newer and a stranger destiny awaited him. This thought, indeed, he carried to his bedroom and slept upon at last. He would find Lois to-morrow and she would be his messenger.
There had still been excited crowds in the streets when he found his bedroom and a high balcony showed him the last phases of a weird pageant. Though it was then nearly midnight, Cossacks continued to patrol the avenue and the mob to deride them. By here and there, where the arc lamps illuminated the pavement, the white faces and slouching figures of the more obstinate among the Revolutionaries spoke of dogged defiance and an utter indifference to personal safety. Alban could well understand why the people had ventured out, but that they should have taken women and even young children with them astonished him beyond measure. These, certainly, could vindicate no principle when their flesh was cut by the brutal whips and the savage horses rode them down to emphasize the majesty of the Czar. Such sights he had beheld that afternoon and such were being repeated, if the terrible cries which came to his ears from time to time were true harbingers. Alban closed his windows at last for very shame and anger. He tried to shut the city's terrible voice from his ears. He wished to believe that his eyes had deceived him.
This would have been about one o'clock in the morning. When he awoke from a heavy sleep (and youth will sleep whatever the circ.u.mstance) the sun was s.h.i.+ning into his rooms and the church-bells called the people to early Ma.s.s. An early riser, long accustomed to be up and out when the clock struck six, he dressed himself at once and determined to see something of Warsaw before the Count was about. This good resolution led him first to the splendid avenue upon which the great hotel was built, and here he walked awhile, rejoicing in his freedom and wondering why he had ever parted with it. Let a man have self-reliance and courage enough and there is no city in all the world which may not become a home to him, no land among whose people he may not find friends, no government whose laws shall trouble him. Alban's old nomadic habits brought these truths to his mind again as he walked briskly down the avenue and filled his lungs with the fresh breezes of that sunny morning. Why should he return to the Count at all? What was Gessner's money to him now? He cared less for it than the stones beneath his feet; he would not have purchased an hour's command of a princely fortune for one of these precious moments.
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