Part 39 (1/2)
Now make haste and discover the whereabouts of my harebrained little niece, Tattie, for the little witch is utterly incorrigible.”
Markoff, pale and hard-faced, was silent for a moment. Then with a strange expression upon his grey, deceitful countenance he said:
”Perhaps I should inform Your Majesty of one point which to-day was reported to us from England--namely, that it is believed that Her Highness has fled with--well, with a lover--a certain young Englishman.”
”A lover!” roared the Emperor, his face instantly white with anger.
”Another lover! Who is he, pray?”
”His name is Richard Drury,” His Excellency replied.
”Then the girl has created an open scandal! The English and French newspapers will get hold of it, and we shall have detailed accounts of the elopement--eh?” he cried excitedly. ”This, Markoff, is really too much!” Then turning to me he asked: ”What do you know of this young Drury? Tell me, Trewinnard.”
”Very little, Sire, except that he is her friend, and that he is in ignorance of her true station.”
”But are they in love with each other?” he demanded in a hard voice.
”Have you neglected my instructions and allowed clandestine meetings-- eh?”
”Unfortunately my journey across Siberia prevented my exercising due vigilance,” I faltered. ”Yet she gave me her word of honour that she would form no male attachment.”
”Bos.h.!.+” he cried angrily, as he crossed the room. ”No girl can resist falling in love with a man if he is good-looking and a gentleman--at least, no girl of Tattie's high spirits and disregard for the _convenances_. You were a fool, Trewinnard, to accept the girl's word.”
”I believed in the honour of a lady,” I said in mild reproach, ”and especially as the lady was a Romanoff.”
”The Romanoff women are as p.r.o.ne to flirtation as any commoner of the same s.e.x,” he declared hastily. ”Markoff knows of more than one scandal which has had to be faced and crushed out during the last five years.
But this fellow Drury,” he added impatiently, ”who is he?”
In a few brief sentences I told him what I knew concerning him.
”You think they have fallen in love?”
”I am fully convinced of it, Sire.”
”Therefore they may have eloped! Tattie's disappearance may have no connection with any revolutionary plot--eh?”
”It may not. But upon that point I am quite undecided,” was my reply.
”Let me hear your views, Markoff,” said the Emperor sharply.
”I believe that Her Highness has fallen the victim of a plot,” was his quick reply. ”The man Drury may have shared the same fate.”
”Fate!” he echoed. ”Do you antic.i.p.ate, then, that the girl is dead?”
”Alas, Sire! If she has fallen into the hands of the revolutionists, then without doubt she is dead,” was the cunning official's reply.
Was he revealing to his Imperial Master a fact that he knew? Was he preparing the Emperor for the receipt of bad news?
I glanced at his grey, coa.r.s.e, sphinx-like countenance, and felt convinced that such was the case. Had she, after all, fallen a victim of his craft and cunning, and were her lips sealed for ever?
I stood there staring at the pair, the Emperor and his all-powerful favourite, like a man in a dream. Suddenly I roused myself with the determination that I would leave no stone unturned to unmask this man and reveal him in his true light to the Sovereign who had trusted him so complacently, and had been so ingeniously blinded and misled by this arch-adventurer, to whose evil machinations the death of so many innocent persons were due.