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

down, and while we watched she was soon asleep. The Finn, who declared that he did not suffer from the cold, removed his coat and placed it tenderly upon her shoulders.

While there was still a ray of light I watched her white refined features as she slept, and was sorely tempted to bend and imprint a kiss upon that soft inviting cheek. Yet I had no right to do so—no right to take such an advantage.

The long cold night passed wearily, and the howling of the wolves caused me to grip my revolver, yet at daybreak we arose refreshed, and notwithstanding the terrible pangs of hunger now gnawing at our vitals, we were prepared to renew our desperate dash for liberty.

Although I had paper, I possessed no pencil with which to write, therefore I could only communicate by signs with the mysterious prisoner of Kajana, the beautiful dark-eyed girl who held me irrevocably beneath the spell of her beauty. All the little acts of homage I was able to perform she accepted with a quiet, calm dignity, while in her deep luminous eyes I read an unfathomable mystery.

The mist had not cleared, for it was soon after dawn when we again moved along, hungry, chill, and yet hopeful. At a spring we obtained some water, and then, in silent procession, pressed forward in search of the rough track of the woodcutters.

Elma's torn shoe gave her considerable trouble, and noticing her limping, I induced her to sit down while I took it off, hoping to be able to mend it, but, having unlaced it, I saw that upon her stocking was a large patch of congealed blood, where her foot itself had also been cut. I managed to beat the nails of the shoe with a stone, so that its sole should not be lost, and she readjusted it, allowing me to lace it up for her and smiling the while.

Forward we trudged, ever forward, across that enormous forest where the myriad treetrunks presented the same dismal scene everywhere, a forest untrodden save by wild, half-savage lumbermen. Throughout that dull gray day we marched onward, faint with hunger, yet suffering but little pain, for the first pangs were now past, and were succeeded by slight light-headedness. My only fear was that we should be compelled to spend another night without shelter, and what its effect might be upon the delicately-reared girl whose hand I held tenderly in mine. Surely my position was a strange one. Her terrible affliction seemed to cause her to be entirely dependent upon me.

Suddenly, just as the yellow sunlight overhead had begun to fade, the flat-faced Finn, whose name he had told me was Felix Estlander, cried joyfully—

"Polushaite! Look, Excellency! Ah! The road at last!"

And as we glanced before us we saw that his quick, well-trained eyes had detected away in the twilight, at some distance, a path traversing our vista among the gray-green tree-trunks. Then, hurrying along, we found ourselves upon a track, on which we turned to the right—a track, rough and deeply-rutted by the felled trunks that were dragged along it to the nearest river.

Elma made a gesture of renewed hope, and all three of us redoubled our pace, expecting every moment to come upon some log hut, the owner of which would surely give us hospitality for the night. But darkness came on quickly, and yet we still pushed forward. Poor Elma was limping, and I knew that her injured foot was paining her, even though she could tell me nothing.

At last, however, after walking for nearly four hours in the almost impenetrable forest gloom, always fearing lest we might miss the path, our hearts suddenly beat quickly by seeing before us a light shining in a window, and five minutes later Felix was knocking at the door, and asking in Finnish the occupant to give hospitality to a lady lost in the forest.

We heard a low growl like a muttered imprecation within, and when the door opened there stood upon the threshold a tall, bearded, muscular old fellow in a dirty red shirt, with a big revolver shining in his hand. A quick glance at us satisfied him that we were not thieves, and he invited us in while Felix explained that we had landed from the lake, and our boat having drifted away we had been compelled to take to the woods. The man heard the Finn's picturesque story, and then said something to me which Felix translated into Russian.

"Your Excellency is welcome to all the poor fare he has. He gives up his bed in the room yonder to the lady, so that she may rest. He is honored by your Excellency's presence."

And while he was making this explanation the herculean wood-cutter in the red shirt stirred the red embers whereon a big pot was simmering, and sending forth an appetizing odor, and in five minutes we were all three sitting down to a stew of capercailzie, with a foaming light beer as a fitting beverage. We finished the dish with such lightning rapidity that our host boiled us a number of eggs, which, I fear, denuded his larder.

The place was a poor one of two low rooms, built of rough log-pines, with double windows for the winter and a high brick stove. Cleanliness was not exactly its characteristic, nevertheless we all passed a very comfortable hour, and received a warm welcome from the lonely old fellow who passed his life so far beyond European civilization, and whose house, he told us, was often snowed up and cut off from all the world for three or four months at a time.

After we had finished our meal, I asked the sturdy old fellow for a pencil, but the nearest thing he possessed was a stick of thick charcoal, and with that it was surely difficult to communicate with our fair companion. Therefore she rose, gave me her hand, bowed smilingly, and then passed into the inner room and closed the door.

The old wood-cutter gave us some coarse tobacco, and after smoking and chatting for an hour we threw ourselves wearily upon the wooden benches and slept soundly.

Suddenly, however, at early dawn, we were startled by a loud banging at the door, the clattering of hoofs, and authoritative shouts in Russian. The old wood-cutter sprang up, and looking through a chink in the heavy shutters turned to us with blanched face, whispering breathlessly—

"The police! What can they want of me?"

"Open!" shouted the horsemen outside. "Open in the name of his Majesty!"

Felix and I sprang up facing each other.

"We are entrapped!"

In an instant our guide Felix made a dash for the door of the inner room where Elma had retired, but next second he reappeared, gasping in Russian—

"Excellency! Why, the door is open! The lady has gone!"

"Gone!" I cried, dismayed, rushing into the little room, where I found the truckle couch empty, and the door leading outside wide open. She had actually disappeared!

The police again battered at the opposite door, threatening loudly to break it in if it were not opened at once, whereupon the old wood-cutter drew the bolt and admitted them. Two big, hulking fellows in heavy riding-coats and swords strode in, while two others remained mounted outside, holding the horses.

"Your names?" demanded one of the fellows, glancing at us as we stood together in expectation.

Our host told them his name, and asked why they wished to enter.

"We are searching for a woman who has escaped from Kajana," was the reply. "Have you seen any woman here?"

"No," responded the wood-cutter. "We never see any woman out in these woods."

The police-officer strode into the inner room, glanced around to make certain that no one was concealed there, and then returning to me asked, "Who are you?"

"That is my own affair," I answered.

The mystery of Elma's disappearance while we had slept annoyed me. She seemed to have fled from me in secret. Yet could she have received some warning that the police were in search of her? She was deaf, therefore she could not have been alarmed by the banging on the door.

"Your identity is my affair," declared the man with the fair, bristly beard, an average type of the uncouth officer of police.

"Who is your chief?" I inquired, as a sudden thought occurred to me.

"Melnikoff, at Helsingfors."

"Then this is not in the district of Abo?"

"No. But what difference does it make? Who are you?"

"Gordon Gregg, British subject," I replied.

"And you are the drosky-driver from Abo," remarked the fellow, turning to Felix. "Exactly as I thought. You are the pair who bribed the nun at Kajana, and succeeded in releasing the Englishwoman. In the name of the Czar, I arrest you!"

The old wood-cutter turned pale as death. We certainly were in grave peril, for I foresaw the danger of falling into the hands of Baron Oberg, the Strangler of Finland. Yet we had a satisfaction in knowing that, be the mystery what it might, Elma had escaped.

"And on what charge, pray, do you presume to arrest me?" I inquired as coolly as I could.

"For aiding a prisoner to escape."

"Then I wish to say, first, that you have no power to arrest me; and, secondly, that if you wish me to give you satisfaction, I am perfectly willing to do so, providing you first accompany me down to Abo."

"It is outside my district," growled the fellow, but I saw that his hesitancy was due to his uncertainty as to whom I really might be.

"I desire you to take me to the Chief of Police Boranski, who will make all the explanation necessary. Until we have an interview with him, I refuse to give any information concerning myself," I said.

"But you have a passport?"

I drew it from my pocket, saying—

"It proves, I think, that my name is what I have told you."

The fellow, standing astride, read it, and handed it back to me.

"Where is the woman?" he demanded. "Tell me."

"I don't know," was my reply.

"Perhaps you will tell me," he said, turning to the old wood-cutter with a sinister expression upon his face. "Remember, these fugitives are found in your house, and you are liable to arrest."

"I don't know—indeed I don't!" protested the old fellow, trembling beneath the officer's threat. Like all his class, he feared the police, and held them in dread.

"Ah, you don't remember, I suppose!" he smiled. "Well, perhaps your memory will be refreshed by a month or two in prison. You are also arrested."

"But, your Excellency, I—"

"Enough!" blared the bristly officer. "You have given shelter to conspirators. You know the penalty in Finland for that, surely?"

"But these gentlemen are surely not conspirators!" the poor old man protested. "His Excellency is English, and the English do not plot."

"We shall see afterwards," he laughed. And then, turning to the agent of police at his side, he gave him orders to search the log-hut carefully, an investigation in which one of the men from the outside joined. They upset everything and pried everywhere.

"You may find papers or letters," said the officer. "Search thoroughly." And in every corner they rummaged, even to taking up a number of boards in the inner room which Elma had occupied. But they found nothing.

A dozen times was the old wood-cutter questioned, but he stubbornly refused to admit that he had ever set eyes upon Elma, while I insisted on my right to return to Abo and see Boranski. I knew, of course, by what we had overheard said by the prison-guards, that the Governor-General was extremely anxious to recapture the girl with whom, I frankly admit, I had now so utterly fallen in love. And it appeared that no effort was being spared to search for us. Indeed, the whole of the police in the provinces of Abo and of Helsingfors seemed to be actively making a house-to-house search.

But what could be the truth of Elma's disappearance? Had she fled of her own accord, or had she once more fallen a victim to some ingenious and dastardly plot. That