The Intriguers

“You are lying,” said her lover sternly. “If you do not confess this instant, I will take you to the Prince himself, and he will wring the truth out of you.”

Katerina’s face went white. She had been very frightened at Beilski, but her terror of Zouroff was greater even than her fear of the Head of the Police. If she saw him in one of the corridors, she would scuttle away like an alarmed rabbit. If he came into her young mistress’s room, she was agitated till he was gone.

In a few moments, what with her fear of Zouroff and her genuine love for Peter, the artful valet had her reduced to a state of tears. It was not long before he forced out of her everything he wanted to know. How she had conveyed the information to the Princess, how she had taken her mistress’s note to Beilski, how, later on, she had been summoned to the presence of that formidable person and confessed much as she was doing now.

Peter uttered no word of reproach; the time of reproaches was past; but he saw clearly that the game was up, so far as the abduction of Corsini was concerned. The sooner he made a clean breast of it to Beilski, the better. At the same time, he wanted to throw suspicion upon somebody else.

He loved Katerina genuinely, too well to harm a hair of her head, even to save himself. In this respect he was several degrees better than his master, who would have sacrificed the whole world for such a laudable purpose.

And to the charming young Princess, with her gracious ways, her sweet friendliness to all, he was also strongly attached. He would not harm a hair of her head, if he could help it. But still, his first instinct was for self.

Besides, if he gave them away, he would be giving himself away, also. What these two women knew, mistress and maid, they must have learned from some member of the Zouroff household.

Was there any member of that household, except himself, who had foreknowledge of the Prince’s plans? He was inclined to doubt it. Confidants he must have, when engaged in so many dark schemes, but Zouroff chose as few as possible. Yet, and yet – if only he could throw suspicion in a likely quarter, on somebody else!

Katerina, embarked on the full tide of confession and genuinely alarmed for her lover’s safety, babbled on artlessly. Peter had drawn a gloomy picture of the vengeance he might expect at the hands of his master for that innocent gossip of a few moments, when discovery came home to him, as it was sure to do. In her revelations she let fall the fact that the celebrated Madame Quéro had paid a visit to the Princess, during her brother’s temporary absence.

Peter pricked up his ears at the information. He knew full well the relations between the Prince and the handsome singer. Here was a fact that might be turned to his advantage. Madame Quéro, he felt assured, participated in all her lover’s secrets.

“Have you any proof of that?” he asked eagerly.

Katerina opened wide her tear-dimmed eyes. “Proof? Do you doubt my word? Why, she gave me her card, and the Princess handed it me back and told me to return it to her, with her excuses for not receiving her. I did not like to be so rude, and I put it in my pocket.”

“Have you still got that card, Katerina?” questioned the valet anxiously.

“Of course I have. I kept it as a souvenir. I regard her as a very distinguished person, and I hear she came from our own class. The Princess, of course, looks upon her as the dirt under her feet, but in her position there is no blame, perhaps, for her doing that.” Thus poor Katerina, divided between loyalty to her young mistress and admiration for the beautiful woman who had overcome such formidable obstacles.

The artful valet put his arm round her waist and imprinted a fond kiss on her pretty cheek.

“Katerina, my little sweetheart, I think you will admit you owe me some amends for your foolish indiscretion. Give me that card, and we will cry quits. But not a word to the Princess. But I forgot. You cannot tell her; you ought to have returned it to Madame Quéro.”

Katerina was glad to be reconciled to her lover on such cheap terms. Five minutes later, the card of La Belle Quéro was in Peter’s hands.

And then Peter thought long and cunningly. He had made up his mind to betray his master – it was a matter of necessity – but he was very particular that his master should not know by whom he was betrayed. There was Fritz, the German, one of the four men implicated in the abduction of Corsini. Fritz was always a shifty person, ready to sell himself to the highest bidder. Peter felt assured that Zouroff’s suspicions were already centred on Fritz. He was one of the two men who had escaped, no doubt with the connivance of the police; anyway, that would be Zouroff’s view.

The possession of Madame Quéro’s card had suggested new lines of thought. Of course, Peter did not know to what extent the beautiful singer was in the Prince’s confidence. Here, naturally, he was groping wildly in the dark. But the more he diverted Zouroff’s attention from himself on to other people, the better.

In divulging what he proposed to do to the Prince, it was more than probable that he would implicate the young Princess Nada. And Peter had a very soft spot in his heart for her. Still, it was simply a question of saving himself. If Zouroff saw red and laid all about him, as it were, Nada must protect herself. Even a ruffian like Zouroff would exercise some compunction when his sister was in question. With regard to La Belle Quéro, who had, at times, treated him a little disdainfully, with the slight arrogance of a person who had emerged from his own class into a superior one, Peter felt no qualms. The Prince and she could adjust their own differences at the proper time and hour.

Later on, he approached Zouroff with his fawning and cringing aspect, and handed him Madame Quéro’s card.

“You know that my eyes and ears are always open in your Excellency’s service,” he whined. “That is what I have found.”

Zouroff’s face grew as black as thunder as he read it. “She has been here, then. To see whom?”

Peter shrugged his shoulders. He wanted to be as non-committal as possible. “That I cannot tell. Your Excellency may guess better than I.”

The Prince looked at him long and intently. Peter was a very cunning rogue; that he knew full well; but he was the last man he was inclined to suspect.

“How did you come into possession of this?” he thundered.

But Peter was determined not to implicate his sweetheart, Katerina. In this respect he was a slightly better man than his master.

“Your Excellency will excuse me; my lips are sealed. One must be faithful to one’s comrades. There are wheels within wheels, as you well know.”

The Prince nodded. He knew Peter well. In many ways he was docile and obedient, but it was always politic not to push him too far; on such occasions the valet was apt to take on a spirit of sturdy independence which his master was compelled to respect. Wild horses would not draw from him how, or through whom, he had discovered that card.

“Leave me, Peter, if you please,” commanded Zouroff. “I must be alone to think this thing over, since you say your lips are sealed.”

He shook his fist angrily in the direction of the retreating valet. “Ah, for my good old father’s days,” he murmured regretfully. “I would have had it out of you with the knout then, my excellent friend.”

Left alone, Zouroff pondered out all these things in his subtle brain. The treacherous Madame Quéro had come to the Palace, to seek whom, and to what purpose?

Rumour, gathered at the stage door, and in the more intimate circles of the profession, averred that the handsome singer was in love with Corsini. He had also his impressions of his sister in connection with the handsome young Italian. He had watched them together in that prolonged conversation on the night of the concert at the Zouroff Palace, on quitting which, Corsini had been abducted.

Rapidly in his own mind, he reconstructed the sequence of events. Madame Quéro was in love with Corsini. He gnashed his teeth as he remembered he had been fool enough to suggest to the Spanish woman that Corsini must disappear. She had acted on that hint and come straight to the Palace to invoke his sister’s assistance in rescuing Corsini.

His sister was in love with Corsini herself. The two rivals had united to save their common lover, and their measures had been well taken. The police had met the carriage at Pavlovsk, rescued the drugged and inanimate Director of the Imperial Opera, and brought him safely back to St. Petersburg. And, in the capital, so Zouroff was assured by his spies, he was being safely guarded by Beilski’s men. The Government and the police were proving themselves very cunning, almost as cunning as Zouroff himself.

So far he had reasoned things out very logically. Now came the one thing for which he could not account. To La Quéro he had given no details, and as he had not given them to her, she could not communicate them to his sister. Here was a final stop.

And yet, the carriage containing Corsini, drugged and bound, had been surrounded at Pavlovsk by the police. Somebody, then, had given information. Who was that somebody?

His suspicion fell at once on Fritz, the German, chiefly, perhaps, because Fritz had been found guilty of minor acts of disloyalty in previous transactions. For a man of his acute intelligence, it was, perhaps, a little surprising that he did not, at first hand, suspect Peter.

But Peter had just disarmed his suspicions by handing to him Madame Quéro’s card. Yes, Peter was loyal, if every other person was tainted with treachery.

There emerged from his strenuous efforts to get at the truth some clear and certain facts, according to his own deductions, which were, of course, erroneous.

Madame Quéro had been informed by Fritz of the actual facts: that Corsini was to be kidnapped just outside the precincts of the Palace, that the carriage was to stop on its first stage on the Moscow road at Pavlovsk.

He had to admit that there were flaws in his reasoning. If Madame Quéro had got this information from Fritz, and she was resolved to save Corsini, she could have informed the police herself. Why had she come to the Palace, to invoke the assistance of Nada?

Pending his cogitations, he had recourse to stimulants, as was his wont on such occasions. Amid the fumes of alcohol he solved the problem, as he thought. Quéro, not wishing to appear herself, had made his sister her instrument. He ground his teeth, and vowed implacable revenge upon his once sweetheart, La Belle Quéro.

But his anger against his sister was hardly less burning. To think that this innocent young girl, only just out of the schoolroom, should dare to thwart his plans.

He burst into her sitting-room, his face red and inflamed from his secret drinking. She recognised the symptoms at once. He had one of his wild fits of brutal and unreasoning rage.

He attacked her at once, in unmeasured language.

“You are a disgrace to your sex,” he shouted wildly, “a disgrace to the noble house of Zouroff, to the name you bear.”

The young Princess looked at him calmly and steadfastly, with her clear gaze. He was a wild beast at the moment – she saw that; also gathered that he had been drinking heavily. Wild beasts are sometimes tamed by the eye. She never took her glance off him.

“Of what do you accuse me?” she asked in cold and cutting accents. “In what way have I, of all the members of our family, disgraced the house of Zouroff?”

The Prince spluttered forth his accusations. “You have disgraced yourself by falling in love with a strolling player, that mountebank, Corsini.”