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

fellow led me, half-dazed, down to the bank of a broad, dark river which I could just distinguish—he led me to an unknown bourne.

CHAPTER XI THE CASTLE OF THE TERROR

The big Finn had, I found, tied up his horses, and in the heavy old boat he rowed me down the swollen river which ran swift and turbulent around a sudden bend and then seemed to open out to a great width. In the starlight I could distinguish that it stretched gray and level to a distance, and that the opposite bank was fringed with pines.

"Where are we going?" I asked my guide in a low voice. But he only whispered:

"Hush! Excellency! Remain patient, and you shall see the young Englishwoman."

So I sat in the boat, while he allowed it to drift with the current, steering it with the great heavy oars. The river suddenly narrowed again, with high pines on either bank, a silent, lonesome reach, perhaps indeed one of the loneliest spots in all Europe. Once the dismal howl of a wolf sounded close to where we passed, but my guide made no remark.

After nearly a mile, the stream again opened out into a broad lake where, in the distance, I saw rising sheer and high from the water, a long square building of three stories, with a tall round tower at one corner—an old medieval castle it seemed to be. From one of the small windows of the tower, as we came into view of it, a light was shining upon the water, and my guide seeing it, grunted in satisfaction. It had undoubtedly been placed there as signal.

With great caution he approached the place, keeping in the deep shadow of the bank until we came exactly opposite the flanking-tower. In the lighted window I distinctly saw a dark figure of someone appear for a moment, and then my guide struck a match and held it in his fingers until it was wholly consumed.

Almost instantly the light was extinguished, and then, after waiting five minutes or so, he pulled straight across the lake to the high, dark tower that descended into the water. The place was as grim and silent as any I had ever seen, an impregnable stronghold of the days before siege guns were invented, the fortress of some feudal prince or count who had probably held the surrounding country in thraldom.

I put my hand against the black, slimy wall to prevent the boat bumping, and then distinguished just beyond me a small wooden ledge and half-a-dozen steps which led up to a low arched door. The latter had opened noiselessly, and the dark figure of a woman stood peering forth.

My guide uttered some reassuring word in Finnish in a low half-whisper, and then slowly pushed the boat along to the ledge, saying:

"Your high nobility may disembark. There is at present no danger."

I rose, gripped a big rusty chain to steady myself, and climbed into the narrow doorway in the ponderous wall, where I found myself in the darkness beside the female who had apparently been expecting our arrival and watching our signal.

Without a word she led me through a short passage, and then, striking a match, lit a big old-fashioned lantern. As the light fell upon her features I saw they were thin and hard, with deep-set eyes and a stray wisp of silver across her wrinkled brow. Around her head was a kind of hood of the same stuff as her dress, a black, coarse woolen, while around her neck was a broad linen collar. In an instant I recognized that she was a member of some religious order, some minor order perhaps, with whose habit we, in Italy, were not acquainted.

The thin ascetic countenance was that of a woman of strong character, and her funereal habit seemed much too large for her stunted, shrunken figure.

"The sister speaks French?" I hazarded in that language, knowing that in most convents throughout Europe French is known.

"Oui, m'sieur," was her answer. "And a leetle Engleesh, too—a ve-ry leetle," she smiled.

"You know why I am here?" I said, gratified that at least one person in that lonesome country could speak my own tongue.

"Yes, I have already been told," was her answer with a strong accent, as we stood in that small, bare stone room, a semicircular chamber in the tower, once perhaps a prison. "But are you not afraid to venture here?" she asked.

"Why?"

"Well—because no strangers are permitted here, you know. If your presence here was discovered you would not leave this place alive—so I warn you."

"I am prepared to risk that," I said, smiling; at the same time my hand instinctively sought my hip-pocket to ascertain that my weapon was safe. "I wish to see Miss Elma Heath."

The old nun nodded, fumbling with her lantern. I glanced at my watch and found that it was already two o'clock in the morning.

"Remember that if you are discovered here you exonerate me of all blame?" she said, raising her head and peering into my face with her keen gray eyes. "By admitting you I am betraying my trust, and that I should not have done were it not compulsory."

"Compulsory! How?"

"The order of the Chief of Police. Even here, we cannot afford to offend him."

So the fellow Boranski had really kept faith with me, and at his order the closed door of the convent had been opened.

"Of course not," I answered. "Russian officialdom is all-powerful in Finland nowadays. But where is the lady?"

"You are still prepared to risk your liberty and life?" she asked in a hoarse voice, full of grim meaning.

"I am," I said. "Lead me to her."

"And when you see her you will make no effort to speak with her? Promise me that."

"Ah, Sister!" I cried. "You are asking too great a sacrifice of me. I come here from England, nay, from Italy in search of her, to question her regarding a strange mystery and to learn the truth. Surely I may be permitted to speak with her?"

"You wish to learn the truth, sir!" remarked the woman. "I thought you were her lover—that you merely wished to see her once again."

"No, I am not her lover," I answered. "Indeed, we have never yet met. But I am in search of the truth from her own lips."

"That you will never learn," she said, in a hard, changed voice.

"Because there is a conspiracy to preserve the secret!" I cried. "But I intend to solve the mystery, and for that reason I have traveled here from England."

The woman with the lantern smiled sadly, as though amused by my impetuosity.

"You are on Russian soil now, m'sieur, not English," she remarked in her broken English. "If your object were known, you would never be spared to return to your own land. Ah!" she sighed, "you do not know the mysteries and terrors of Finland. I am a French subject, born in Tours, and brought to Helsingfors when I was fifteen. I have been in Finland forty-five years. Once we were happy here, but since the Czar appointed Baron Oberg to be Governor-General----" and she shrugged her shoulders without finishing her sentence.

"Baron Oberg—Governor-General of Finland!" I gasped.

"Certainly. Did you not know?" she said, dropping into French. "It is four years now that he has held supreme power to crush and Russify these poor Finns. Ah, m'sieur! this country, once so prosperous, is a blot upon the face of Europe. His methods are the worst and most unscrupulous of any employed by Russia. Before he came here he was the best hated man in Petersburg, and that, they say, is why the Emperor sent him to us."

"And he is uncle of this young lady, Elma Heath?"

"Uncle? Ah! I don't know that, m'sieur. I have never been told so. His niece—poor young lady!—can that be? Surely not!"

"Why not?" I asked.

But the woman gave me no reason; she only exhibited her palms and sighed. She seemed to have compassion upon the girl I sought; her heart was really softer than I had believed it to be.

"Where does this Baron live?" I asked, surprised that he should occupy so high a place in Russian officialdom—the representative of the Czar, with powers as great as the Emperor himself.

"At the Government Palace, in Helsingfors."

"And Elma Heath is here—in this grim fortress! Why?"

"Ah, m'sieur, how can I tell? By reason of family secrets, perhaps. They account for so much, you know."

"That is exactly my opinion," I said. "She has been brought here against her will."

"Most probably. This is not a cheerful place, as you see. We have five months of ice and snow, and for four months are practically cut off from civilization and see no new face."

"Terrible!" I gasped, glancing round at those dark stone walls that seemed to breathe an air of tragedy and mystery. The old castle had, I supposed, been turned into a convent, as many have been in Germany and Austria. Back in feudal times it no doubt had been a grand old place. "And have you been here long?" I asked.

"Seven years only. But I am leaving. Even I, used as I am to a solitary life, can stand it no longer. I feel that its cold silence and dreariness will drive me mad. In winter the place is like an ice-well."

The fact that the Baron was ruler of Finland amazed me, for I had half-expected him to be some clever adventurer. Yet as the events of the past flashed through my brain, I recollected that in Rannoch Wood had been found the miniature of the Russian Order of Saint Anne, a distinction which, in all probability, had been conferred upon him. If so, the coincidence, to say the least, was a remarkable one. I questioned my companion further regarding the Baron.

"Ah, m'sieur," she declared, "they call him 'The Strangler of the Finns,' It was he who ordered the peasants of Kasko to be flogged until four of them died—and the Czar gave him the Star of White Eagle for it—he who suppressed half the newspapers and put eighteen editors in prison for publishing a report of a meeting of the Swedes in Helsingfors; he who encourages corruption and bribery among the officials for the furtherance of Russian interests; he who has ordered Russian to be the official language, who has restricted public education, who has overtaxed and ground down the people until now the mine is laid, and Finland is ready for open revolt. The prisons are filled with the innocent; women are flogged; the poor are starving, and 'The Strangler,' as they call him, reports to the Czar that Finland is submissive and is Russianized!"

I had heard something of this abominable state of affairs from time to time from the English press, but had never taken notice of the name of the oppressor. So the uncle of Elma Heath was "The Strangler of Finland," the man who, in four years, had reduced a prosperous country to a state of ruin and revolt!

"Cannot I see her?" I asked, feeling that we had remained too long there. If my presence in that place was perilous the sooner I escaped from it the better.

"Yes, come," she said. "But silence! Walk softly," and holding up the old horn lantern to give me light, she led me out into the low stone corridor again, conducting me through a number of intricate passages, all bare and gloomy, the stones worn hollow by the feet of ages. On we crept noiselessly past a number of low arched doors studded with big nails in the style of generations ago, then turning suddenly at right angles, I saw that we were in a kind of cul de sac, before the door of which at the end she stopped and placed her finger upon her lips. Then, motioning me to remain there, she entered, closing the door after her, and leaving me in the pitch darkness.

I strained my ears, but could hear no sound save that of someone moving within.