CHAPTER XXII

A FIGURE IN THE STRAW

A little light filtered down through the crevices and betrayed the secrets of that strange refuge in all their amazing simplicity. Here was neither costly furniture nor any adornment whatsoever. A thick carpet of straw, giving flecks of gold wherever the sunlight struck down upon it, had been laid to such a depth that a grown man might have concealed himself therein. A few empty bales stood here and there as though thrown down at hazard; there were coils of rope and great blocks of timber used by the stevedores who loaded the barges. But of the common things of daily life not a trace. No tables, no chairs, neither bed nor blanket adorn this rude habitation. Let a sergeant of police open his lantern there and the tousled straw would answer him in mockery. This, for a truth, had been the case. Little Lois could tell a tale of Cossacks on the barge, even of rifles fired down into the hold, and of a child's heart beating so quickly that she thought she must cry out for very pain of it. But that was before the men were told that the ship belonged to merry Herr Petermann. They went away at once then--to drink the old fellow's beer and to laugh with him.

That had been a terrible day and Lois had never forgotten it. Whenever old Petermann opened the door of his office now, she would start and tremble as though a Cossack's hand already touched her shoulder.

Sometimes she lay deep down in the straw, afraid to declare herself even though a friend's voice called her. And so it was upon that morning of Alban's visit.

Old Petermann had shut the cabin door behind him and discreetly left the young people together. Seeing little in the deep gloom and his eyes blinking wherever he turned them, Alban stood almost knee-deep in straw and cried Lois' name aloud.

"Lois--where are you, Lois--why don't you answer me?"

She crept from the depths at his very feet and shaking the straw from her pretty hair, she stood upright and put both her hands upon his shoulders.

"I am here, Alb dear, just waiting for you. Won't you kiss me, Alb dear?"

He put his arms about her neck and kissed her at her wish--just as a brother might have kissed a sister in the hour of her peril.

"I came at once, Lois," he said, "of course I did not understand that it would be like this. Why are you here? Whatever has happened--what does it all mean? Will you not teach me to understand, Lois?"

"Sit by my side, Alb dear, sit down and listen to me. I want you to know what your friends have been doing. Oh, I have been so lonely, so frightened, and I don't deserve that. You know that my father is in prison, Alb--the Count told you that?"

"I heard it before I left England, Lois. You did not answer my letters?"

"I was ashamed to, dear. That was the first thing they taught me at the school--to be ashamed to write to you until you would not be ashamed to read my letters. Can't you understand, Alb? Wasn't I right to be ashamed?"

She buried her head upon his breast and put a little hot hand into his own. A great tenderness toward her filled his whole being and brought a sense of happiness very foreign to him lately. How gentle and kindly this little waif of fortune had ever been. And how even those few weeks of a better schooling had improved her. She had shed all the old vulgarities--she was just a simple schoolgirl as he would have wished her to be.

"We are never right to be ashamed before those who love us," Alban said kindly; "you did not write to me and how was I to know what had happened? Of course, your father told you what I had been doing and why I went away from Union Street? It was all his kindness. I know it now and I have come to Russia to thank him--when he is free. That won't be very long now that I have found you. They were frightened of you, Lois--they thought you were going to betray their secrets to the Revolutionary party. I knew that you would not do so--I said so all along."

She looked up at him with glowing eyes, and putting her lips very close to his ear she said:

"I loved you, Alb--I never could have told them while I loved you--not even to save my father, and G.o.d knows how much I love him. Did not they say that you were very happy with Mr. Gessner? There would have been no more happiness if I had told them."

"And that is what kept you silent, Lois?"

She would not answer him, but hiding her face again, she asked him a question which surprised him greatly.

"Do you know why the police wished to arrest me, Alb dear?"

"How could I know that, Lois?"

"It was the Count who told them to do so. He is only deceiving you, dear. He does not want to release my father and will never do so. If I were in prison too, he thinks that Mr. Gessner would be quite safe. Do not trust the Count if you would help us. My people understand him and they will punish him some day. He has done a great wrong to many in Warsaw, and he deserves to be punished. You must remember this, dear, when he promises my father's freedom. He is not telling you the truth--he is only asking you to punish me."

"But, Lois, what have you done, what charge can they bring against a little schoolgirl?"

"I am my father's daughter," she said proudly, "that is why they would punish me. Oh, you don't know, dear. Even the little children are criminals in Warsaw. My father escaped from Saghalen and I have no right to live in Russia. When he sent me to school here, I did not come under my own name, they called me Lois Werner and believed I was a German.

Then my people heard that Count Sergius wished to have me arrested, and they took me away from the school and brought me here. Herr Petermann is one of my father's oldest friends. He has saved a great many who would be in prison but for his kindness. We can trust Herr Petermann, dear--he will never betray us."

Alban understood, but he had no answer ready for her. All that she had told him filled him with unutterable contempt toward the men he had but lately considered as his patrons and his friends. The polished, courtly Sergius, his master Richard Gessner--to what duplicity had they not stooped, nay, to what treachery? For they had sent him into Russia, not to befriend this child, but to put the ultimate shame of a Russian prison upon her--the cell, the lash, the unnamable infamy. As in a flash he detected the whole conspiracy and laid it bare. He, Alban Kennedy, had been chosen as their instrument--he had been sent to Poland to condemn this little friend of the dreadful years to the living death in a Russian prison. The blood raced in his veins at the thought. Perhaps for the first time in his life he knew the meaning of the word anger.

"Lois," he exclaimed presently, "if Mr. Gessner does not set your father free, I myself will tell your people. That is the message I am going to send to him to-day. Count Sergius will not lie to me again--I shall tell him so when I return."

She started up in wild alarm.

"You must not do it--I forbid it," she cried, closing her white arms about his neck as though to protect him already from his enemies. "Oh, my dear, you do not know the Russian people, you do not know what it means to stand against the police here and have them for your enemies.

Mr. Gessner is their friend. The Government would do a great deal to serve him--my father says so. If Count Sergius heard that you had met me, we should both be in prison this night--ah, dear G.o.d, what a prison, what suffering--and I have seen it myself, the women cowering from the lash, the men beaten so that they cut the flesh from their faces. That's what happens to those who go against the Government, dear Alb--but not to you because you love me."

She clung to him hysterically, for this long vigil had tried her nerves and the shadow of discovery lay upon her always. It had been no surprise to her to find Alban in Warsaw, for the Revolutionary Committee in London had informed her friends by cable on the very day that Count Sergius had left. She knew exactly how he had come, where he had stopped, and when to seek him out. But now that his arms were about her, she dreaded a new separation and was almost afraid to release his hand from hers.

"You will not leave me, Alban," she said--a new dignity coming to her suddenly as though some lesson, not of the school, but of life, had taught it to her--"you will take me to London with you--yes, yes, dear, as your servant. That is what my friends wish, they have thought it all out. I am to go as your servant and you must get a pa.s.sport for me--for Lois Werner, and then if you call me by my own name no one will know.

There we can see Mr. Gessner together and speak of my father. I will promise him that his secret shall never be known. He will trust me, Alban, because I promise him."

Alban stooped and kissed her upon the lips.

"No," he said, "the work must be done here in Russia, Lois. I am called to do it and I go now. Let me find you at the same time to-morrow, and I will tell you what I have done. G.o.d bless you, Lois. It is happiness to be with you again."

Their lips met, their arms unclasped reluctantly. A single tap upon the panel of the cabin brought that merry old fellow, Herr Petermann, to open to them. Alban told him in a sentence what had happened and hastened back to the hotel.

CHAPTER XXIII

AN INSTRUCTION TO THE POLICE

Count Sergius was a little more than uneasy when Alban returned--he was suspicious. A highly trained agent of Government himself, he rarely permitted any circ.u.mstance, however trifling, to escape him; and this circ.u.mstance of tardiness was not trifling.

"He has met the girl," the argument went, "and she is detaining him with a fine story of her wrongs. He may learn that we have tricked him and that would be troublesome. Certainly I was a fool not to have had him watched--but, then, his first night in Warsaw and he a stranger! We shall make up for lost time at once. I will see the Chief and give instructions. A dove does not go but once to the nest. We will take wings ourselves next time."

By which it will be perceived that he blamed himself for having lost a great opportunity and determined not to do so a second time. His whole purpose in coming to Warsaw had been to track down Boriskoff's daughter and to hand her over to the police. This he owed to his employers, the Government, and to his friend, Richard Gessner--than whom none would pay a better price for the service. And when it were done, then he imagined that nothing in the world would be easier than to excuse himself to this amiable lad and to take him back to England without any loss of time whatever. In all a pretty plan, lacking only the finer judgment to discern the strength of the enemy's force and not to despise them.

Alban entered the sitting-room just as the Count had determined to have his breakfast. It was nearly twelve o'clock then and the fierce heat of the day made the streets intolerable. Few people were abroad in the great avenue--there was no repet.i.tion of the disturbance of yesterday, nor any Cossack going at a gallop. Down below in the restaurant a bevy of smartly dressed women ate and gossiped to the music of a good Hungarian band. From distant streets there came an echo of gongs and the m.u.f.fled hum of wheels; the sirens of the steam-tugs screamed incessantly upon the sleepy river.

Whatever the Count's curiosity may have been, he had the wit to hide it when Alban appeared. Adopting a well-feigned tone of raillery, he spoke as men speak when another has been absent and has no good excuse to make.

"I will ask no questions," he said with mock solemnity--"A man who forgets how to breakfast is in a bad way. That is to suppose that you have not breakfasted--ah, forgive me, she makes coffee like a chef, perhaps, and there is no Rhine wine to match the gold of her hair. Let us talk politics, history, the arts--anything you like. I am absolutely discreet, Mr. Kennedy, I have forgotten already that you were late."

Alban drew a chair to the table and began to eat with good appet.i.te. His sense of humor was strong enough to lead him to despise such talk at any time, but to-day it exasperated him. Understanding perfectly well what was in the Count's mind, he was not to be trapped by any such artifice.

Honesty is a card which a diplomatist rarely expects an opponent to hold. Alban held such a card and determined to play it without loss of time.

"I have seen Lois Boriskoff," he said.

"Again--that is quick work."

The Count looked up, still smiling.