The Czar's Spy, William le Queux [reading like a writer txt] 📗

England with her green fields, her muddy lanes, and the bustling streets of her gray, grimy cities. You have but one "home," and England Is still your home, even though you may become the most bigoted of cosmopolitans and may have no opportunity of speaking your native tongue the whole year through.

Duty—the duty of a man who had learned strange facts and knew that a defenseless woman was a victim—called me to Finland. Therefore, with my passport properly viséd and my papers all in order, I one night left Hull for Stockholm by the weekly Wilson service. Four days of rough weather in the North Sea and the Baltic brought me to the Swedish capital, whence on the following day I took the small steamer which plies three times a week around the Aland Islands, and then across the Gulf of Bothnia to Korpo, and through the intricate channels and among those low-lying islands to the gray lethargic town of Abo.

It was not the first occasion on which I had trod Russian soil, and I knew too well the annoyances of the bureaucracy. Finland, however, is perhaps the most severely governed of any of the Czar's dominions, and I had my first taste of its stern, relentless officialdom at the moment of landing on the half-deserted quay.

In the wooden passport office the uniformed official, on examining my passport, discovered that at the Russian Consulate-General they had forgotten to date the visé which had been impressed with a rubber stamp. It was signed by the Consul-General, but the date was missing, whereupon the man shook his head and handed back the document curtly, saying in Russian, which I understood fairly well, although I spoke badly—

"This is not in order. It must be returned to London and dated before you can proceed."

"But it is not my fault," I protested. "It is the fault of the clerk at the Consulate-General."

"You should have examined it before leaving. You must send it to London, and return to Stockholm by to-night's boat."

"But this is outrageous!" I cried, as he had already taken the papers of a passenger behind me and was looking at them with unconcern.

"Enough!" he exclaimed, glaring at me. "You will return to-night, or if you choose to stay you will be arrested for landing without a passport."

"I shall not go back!" I declared defiantly. "Your Consul-General viséd my passport, and I claim, under international law, to be allowed to proceed without hindrance."

"The steamer leaves at six o'clock," he remarked without looking up. "If you are in Abo after that it will be at your own risk."

"I am English, recollect," I said.

"To me it does not matter what or who you are. Your passport, undated, is worthless."

"I shall complain to the Ambassador at Petersburg."

"Your Ambassador does not interest me in the least. He is not Ambassador here in Finland. There is no Czar here."

"Oh! Who is ruler in this country, pray?"

"His Excellency the Governor-General, an official who has love for neither England nor the pigs of English. So recollect that."

"Yes," I said meaningly, "I shall recollect it." And I turned and went out of the little wooden office, replacing my passport in my pocket-book.

I had already been directed to the hotel, and walked there, but as I did so I saw that I was already under the surveillance of the police, for two men in plain clothes who were lounging outside the passport-office strolled on after me, evidently to watch my movements. Truly Finland was under the iron-heel of autocracy.

After taking my rooms, I strolled about the flat, uninteresting town, wondering how best to commence my search. If I had but a photograph to show people it would give me a great advantage, but I had nothing. I had never, indeed, set eyes upon the unfortunate girl.

Six o'clock came. I heard the steam siren of the departing boat bound for Sweden, but I was determined to remain there at whatever cost, therefore I returned to the hotel, and at seven dined comfortably in company with a German who had been my fellow-passenger across from Stockholm.

At eight o'clock, however, just as we were idling over dessert, two gray-coated police officers entered and arrested me on the serious charge of landing without a passport.

I accompanied them to the police-office, where I was ushered into the presence of the big, bristly Russian who held the town of Abo in terror, the Chief of Police. The officials which Russia sends into Finland are selected for their harsh discipline and hide-bound bureaucracy, and this human machine in uniform was no exception. Had he been the Minister of the Interior himself, he could not have been more self-opinionated.

"Well?" he snapped, looking up at me as I was placed before him. "Your name is Gordon Gregg, English, from Stockholm. No passport, and decline to leave even though warned—eh?"

"I have a passport," I said firmly, producing it.

He looked at it, and pointing with his finger, said: "It has no date, and is therefore worthless."

"The fault is not mine, but that of a Russian official. If you wish it to be dated, you may send it to your Consulate-General in London."

"I shall not," he cried, glaring at me angrily. "And for your insult to the law, I shall commit you to prison for one month. Perhaps you will then learn Russian manners."

"Oh! so you will commit an Englishman to prison for a month, without trial—eh? That's very interesting! Perhaps if you attempt such a thing as that they may have something to say about it in Petersburg."

"You defy me!"

"Not in the least. I have presented my passport and demand common courtesy."

"Your passport is worthless, I tell you!" he cried. "There, that's how much it is worth to me!" And snatching it up he tore it in half and tossed the pieces of blue paper in my face.

My blood was up at this insult, yet I bit my lips and remained quite calm.

"Perhaps you will kindly tell me who you are?" I asked in as quiet a voice as I could command.

"With pleasure. I am Michael Boranski, Chief of Police of the Province of Abo-Biornebourg."

"Ah! Well, Michael Boranski, I shall trouble you to pick up my passport, stick it together again, and apologize to me."

"Apologize! Me apologize!" And the fellow laughed aloud, while the police officers on either side of me grinned from ear to ear.

"You refuse?"

"Refuse? Certainly I do!"

"Very well, then," I said, re-opening my pocket-book and taking out an open letter. "Perhaps you will kindly glance at that. It is in Russian, so you can read it."

He snatched it from me with ill-grace, but not without curiosity. And then, as he read the lines, his face changed and he went paler. Raising his head, he stood staring at me open-mouthed in amazement.

"I apologize to your Excellency!" he gasped, blanched to the lips. "I most humbly apologize. I—I did not know. You told me nothing!"

"Perhaps you will kindly mend my passport, and give it a proper visé."

In an instant he was up from his chair, and having gathered the torn paper from the floor, proceeded to paste it together. On the back he endorsed that it had been torn by accident, and then gave it the proper visé, affixing the stamps.

"I trust, Excellency," he said, bowing low as he handed it to me, "I trust that this affair will not trouble you further. I assure you I had no intention of insulting you."

"Yes, you had!" I said. "You insulted me merely because I am English. But recollect in future that the man who insults an Englishman generally pays for it, and I do not intend to let this pass. There is a higher power in Finland than even the Governor-General."

"But, Excellency," whined the fellow who only ten minutes ago had been such an insulting bully, "I shall lose my position. I have a wife and six children—my wife is delicate, and my pay here is not a large one. You will forgive, won't you, Excellency? I have apologized—I most humbly apologize."

And he took up the letter I had given him, holding it gingerly with trembling fingers. And well he might, for the document was headed:

"MINISTER OF THE IMPERIAL HOUSEHOLD,
"PALACE OF PETERHOF.

"The bearer of this is one Gordon Francis Gregg, British subject, whom it is Our will and command that he shall be Our guest during his journey through our dominion. And we hereby command all Governors of Provinces and minor officials to afford him all the facilities he requires and privileges and immunities as Our guest."

The above decree was in a neat copper-plate handwriting in Russian, while beneath was the sprawling signature of the ruler of one hundred and thirty millions of people, that signature that was all-powerful from the gulf of Bothnia to the Pacific—"Nicholas."

The document was the one furnished to me a year before when, at the invitation of the Russian Government, I had gone on a mission of inquiry into the state of the prisons in order to see, on behalf of the British public, whether things were as black as some writers had painted them. It had been my intention to visit the far-off penal settlements in Northern Siberia, but having gone through some twenty prisons in European Russia, my health had failed and I had been compelled to return to Italy to recuperate. The document had therefore remained in my possession because I intended to resume my journey in the following summer. It was in order that I should be permitted to go where I liked, and to see what I liked without official hindrance, that his Majesty the Emperor had, at the instigation of the Ministry of the Interior, given me that most valuable document.

Sight of it had changed the Chief of Police from a burly bully into a whining coward, for he saw that he had torn up the passport of a guest of the Czar, and the consequence was most serious if I complained. He begged of me to pardon him, urging all manner of excuses, and humbling himself before me as well as before his two inferiors, who now regarded me with awe.

"I will atone for the insult in any way your high Excellency desires," declared the official. "I will serve your Excellency in any way he may command."

His words suggested a brilliant idea. I had this man in my power; he feared me.

"Well," I said after some reluctance, "there is a little matter in which you might be of some assistance. If you will, I will reconsider my decision of complaining to Petersburg."

"And what is that, Excellency?" he gasped eagerly.

"I desire to know the whereabouts of a young English lady named Elma Heath," I said, and I wrote down the name for him upon a piece of paper. "Age about twenty, and was at school at Chichester, in England. She is a niece of a certain Baron Oberg."

"Baron Oberg!" he repeated, looking at me rather strangely, I thought.

"Yes, as she is a foreigner she will be registered in your books. She is somewhere in your province, but where I do not know. Tell me where she is, and I will say nothing more about my passport," I added.

"Then your high Excellency wishes to see the young lady?" he said reflectively, with the paper in his hand.

"Yes."

"In that case, it being commanded by the Emperor that I shall serve your Excellency, I will have immediate inquiries made," was his answer. "When I discover her whereabouts, I will do myself the pleasure of calling at your Excellency's hotel."

And I left the fellow, very satisfied that I had turned his officiousness and hatred of the English to very good account.

On that gray, dreary northern coast the long winter was fast setting in. Poor oppressed Finland suffers under a hard climate with August frosts, an eight months' winter in the north, and five months of frost in the south. Idling in sleepy Abo, where the public buildings were so mean and meager and the houses