“Will you please ask Catrina to send me money through the usual channel? No more than she has been sending. It will suffice for my small wants. Perhaps someday we may meet in Switzerland or in America. Tell the dear child that. Tell her I pray the good God to allow that meeting. As for Russia, her day has not come yet. It will not come in our time, my dear friend. We are only the sowers. So much for the future. Now about the past. I have not been idle. I know who stole the papers of the Charity League and sold them. I know who bought them and paid for them.”
Steinmetz closed the door. He came back to the table. He was not smiling now—quite the contrary.
“Tell me,” he said. “I want to know that badly.”
The Count Lanovitch looked up with a peculiar soft smile—acquired in prison. There is no mistaking it.
“Oh, I bear no ill will,” he said.
“I do,” answered Steinmetz bluntly. “Who stole the papers from Thors?”
“Sydney Bamborough.”
“Good God in heaven! Is that true?”
“Yes, my friend.”
Steinmetz passed his broad hand over his forehead as if dazed.
“And who sold them?” he asked.
“His wife.”
Count Lanovitch was looking at the burner of the lamp. There was a peculiar crushed look about the man, as if he had reached the end of his life, and was lying like a ship, hopelessly disabled in smooth water, where nothing could affect him more.
Steinmetz scratched his forehead with one finger, reflectively.
“Vassili bought them,” he said; “I can guess that.”
“You guess right,” returned Lanovitch quietly.
Steinmetz sat down. He looked round as if wondering whether the room was very hot. Then with a large handkerchief he wiped his brow.
“You have surprised me,” he admitted. “There are complications. I shall sit up all night with your news, my dear Stépan. Have you details? Wonderful—wonderful! Of course there is a God in heaven. How can people doubt it—eh?”
“Yes,” said Stépan Lanovitch quietly. “There is a God in heaven, and at present he is angry with Russia. Yes, I have details. Sydney Bamborough came to stay at Thors. Of course he knew all about the Charity League—you remember that. It appears that his wife was waiting for him and the papers at Tver. He took them from my room, but he did not get them all. Had he got them all you would not be sitting there, my friend. The general scheme he got—the list of committee names, the local agents, the foreign agents. But the complete list of the League he failed to find. He secured the list of subscribers, but learned nothing from it because the sums were identified by a numeral only, the clue to the numbers being the complete list, which I burned when I missed the other papers.”
Steinmetz nodded curtly.
“That was wise,” he said. “You are a clever man, Stépan, but too good for this world and its rascals. Go on.”
“It would appear that Bamborough rode to Tver with the papers, which he handed to his wife. She took them to Paris while he intended to come back to Thors. He had a certain cheap cunning and unbounded impertinence. But—as you know, perhaps—he disappeared.”
“Yes,” said Steinmetz, scratching his forehead with one finger. “Yes—he disappeared.”
Karl Steinmetz had one great factor of success in this world—an infinite capacity for holding his cards.
“One more item,” said the count, in his businesslike, calm way. “Vassili paid that woman seven thousand pounds for the papers.”
“And probably charged his masters ten,” added Steinmetz.
“And now you must go!”
The count rose and looked at his watch—a cheap American article, with a loud tick. He held it out with his queer washed-out smile, and Steinmetz smiled.
The two embraced again—and there was nothing funny in the action. It is a singular thing that the sight of two men kissing is conducive either to laughter or to tears. There is no medium emotion.
“My dear friend—my very dear friend,” said the count, “God be with you always. We may meet again—or we may not.”
Steinmetz walked down the Nevski Prospekt on the left-hand pavement—no one walks on the other—and the sleigh followed him. He turned into a large, brilliantly lighted café, and loosened his coat.
“Give me beer,” he said to the waiter; “a very large quantity of it.”
The man smiled obsequiously as he set the foaming mug before him.
“Is it that his Excellency is cold?” he enquired.
“No, it isn’t,” answered Steinmetz. “Quite the contrary.”
He drank the beer, and holding out his hand in the shadow of the table, he noticed that it trembled only a little.
“That is better,” he murmured. “But I must sit here a while longer. I suppose I was upset. That is what they call it—upset! I have never been like that before. Those lamps in the Prospekt! Gott! how they jumped up and down!”
He pressed his hand over his eyes as if to shut out the brightness of the room—the glaring gas and brilliant decorations—the shining bottles and the many tables which would not keep still.
“Here,” he said to the man, “give me more beer.”
Presently he rose, and, getting rather clumsily into his sleigh, drove back at the usual breakneck pace to the palace at the upper end of the English Quay.
He sent an ambiguous message to Paul, saying that he had returned and was dressing for dinner. This ceremony he went through slowly, as one dazed by a great fall or a heavy fatigue. His servant, a quick, silent man, noticed the strangeness of his manner, and like a wise servant only betrayed the result of his observation by a readier service, a quicker hand, a quieter motion.
As Steinmetz went to the drawing-room he glanced at his watch. It was twenty minutes past seven. He still had ten minutes to spare before dinner.
He opened the drawing-room door. Etta was sitting by the fire, alone. She glanced back over her shoulder in a quick, hunted way which had only become apparent to Steinmetz since her arrival at Petersburg.
“Good
