will sell on the premises the whole of the contents of the superb mansion known as 108, Curzon Street, Mayfair, consisting of antique and modern furniture, piano, china, glass, pictures, and a rare and valuable collection of antiquities, gold and silver plate, jewels, etc. The sale will take place on Thursday next, the 12th inst., at eleven o'clock precisely. To view, by cards only, the day prior to and morning of the sale. Cards from Messrs. Gideon, Eyre, and Blackwell, Solicitors, 97, Bedford Row, W.C., or from the Auctioneers."
It was some ten days since Volenski, stricken down by illness, had had enforced rest and captivity in a London hotel, and he now sat convalescent, yet still ailing, bodily and mentally, with that day's Times, containing the above announcement, in his hand.
He had now become almost accustomed to his ill-luck, which had been pursuing him so steadily without break or respite, landing him at last on a bed of sickness in a hotel–in a strange land, far from all his friends.
The long-enforced rest the doctor had prescribed for him had enabled him to collect his energies for a final struggle, which he knew was inevitable. Matters, he knew, could not remain as they were. The sacred trust that had been placed in his charge, and which he had so unwittingly betrayed into alien hands, must become his again, if at the cost of the last remnant of energy left in him after so protracted a struggle. Vainly, during the long hours of enforced idleness, he had tried to conjecture where the scene of his next battle would be laid, the decisive battle he would yet have to fight.
And there it was, announced in the columns of The Times. The scene would be an auction room, the battle one of money. He had written to Lobkowitz, asking for his help, and now was waiting anxiously to know what the president had decided to do. He believed that Lobkowitz would continue to trust him to the last, and hoped he would not find it necessary to ask the help and counsel of some more determined members of the committee. Volenski felt that they would never forgive, and look upon his blunder as twin-brother to a crime.
In the midst of his reflections the waiter interrupted him, telling him that a gentleman, a foreigner, desired to speak with him.
"Show him up at once," said Volenski eagerly.
He hoped it would be Lobkowitz, longed to grasp his old friend's hand, tell him all he had suffered, and revel in his sympathy. But it was Mirkovitch, sullen, grim, half menacing, who refused to take his hand, and would not sit, but stood firm and silent till Iván had explained, had told him all.
And it was to this stern judge, this man whose unerring hand would inevitably punish the guilty, if guilt there be, that Iván Volenski had to tell the history of his relentless fate.
He told him of the Cardinal's mission, of the Emperor's candlesticks, with the mysterious, hidden receptacles, into which, believing he was acting for the best, he had hidden the compromising papers. Then of the Cardinal's sudden caprice in entrusting these candlesticks into the hands of a friend–a lady. He told him of the robbery at Oderberg, the escape of the thief, his own cautious interview with the chief of the police. He described his fruitless search in Grete Ottlinger's room, his loathsome experience with the coarse woman in the "Kaiser Franz," his interview with Grünebaum, his journey to London, then his visit to Davies; all fruitless, all leading to more disappointments, more hopeless entanglements. Then finally and, worst of all, the crushing of all his hopes at the door of Mr. James Hudson, who, by some fatality in which the superstitious Pole saw the hand of diabolical agency, had died suddenly that very night.
Mirkovitch had listened attentively and silently through this long narrative of misery and struggle. A kinder look had perhaps replaced the habitual grimness of his face, and when Iván paused at last exhausted he drew a chair near the sick man's couch, and said almost gently:
"My poor friend, you must have suffered much."
Iván thanked him with a look, and eagerly grasped the hand the old Socialist now held out towards him.
"I suppose you are quite aware where you committed the great, the only real fault in all this long history of misfortune?" said Mirkovitch at last, still quite kindly.
"You mean that I did not communicate with either Lobkowitz or yourself the moment those candlesticks passed out of my possession?"
Mirkovitch assented.
"Remember, I gathered from the Cardinal's speech that the lady had never touched the one which contained our papers. It was damaged, and in his Eminence's own presence she had packed it up and placed it on one side."
"I noticed, Iván, that you have not told me the name of the lady who had charge of the Emperor's candlesticks, and therefore like yourself has some right to claim them?"
Volenski paused awhile, and then the name came from his lips like a whisper:
"It was Anna Demidoff."
Mirkovitch jumped up; the gentleness, the sympathy he had assumed for a brief space was gone in a moment, and once more there stood the judge, ready to punish and to condemn.
"Iván Stefanovitch Volenski," he said, "you were then content to allow that spy, that agent of our bitterest foes, to have even for an hour our dearest secrets under her roof, close to her very hand, without sweeping her out of our path, or, if you were too faint-hearted, asking those who are strong to clear the way of such a powerful foe?"
Iván did not reply. What could he say? The reproach was true enough, but he had meant well; it was fate that had been too strong. He watched Mirkovitch now as the grim Nihilist paced up and down the narrow room, with thoughts of vengeance written on his stern, rugged face.
"If only the Tsarevitch were under my hands still," he muttered, "all might yet have been saved."
"Then…?" asked Iván eagerly, "Dunajewski –– ?"
"Is in England safely to-day, and the Tsarevitch back in Petersburg."
"I do not understand," said Iván, bewildered. "How, then, were the negotiations conducted?"
"In the simplest way imaginable," said Mirkovitch, "by a woman, my daughter."
"Maria Stefanowna?"
"She, it appears, had some womanish scruples, shared, by the way, by many of our comrades, as to the advisability of doing away with our prisoner as I had proposed all along, and accomplishing by terror what we could not do by diplomacy. When you were not heard of, and it became clear that some untoward fate had reached you, we all voted Nicholas' death sentence.
"She, on her own initiative, thought out the daring plan of making that old fool Lavrovski be the bearer of our manifesto to the Tsar, in exactly the same terms as on the letter you were yourself taking to Taranïew. Without consulting the committee she sought him out, for we had previously ascertained that through sheer terror he had persistently put off communicating with the government at Petersburg. With the dagger, so to speak, at his master's heart, Lavrovski had no chance but to accept, and he became the bearer of our ultimatum. What passed at Petersburg between himself and the authorities we, of course, do not know, but three days ago the official papers announced the liberation of the convicted Nihilist Dunajewski, and his comrades, and their safe conduct across the frontier. Some of our committee met them there with money and clothes, and Maria went with them, as we all thought it would be safer for us all if she stayed in England for a while.
"The evening of the same day the Tsarevitch was led blindfold out of my house in the Heumarkt, and thus was terminated the finest plot ever invented by our great brotherhood."
"Thank
