that," said Iván fervently.
"Curse you for compromising us all and our cause, just after our glorious victory," retorted Mirkovitch savagely, "and curse our folly for trusting you so much."
The young Pole sprang up at the taunt.
"Your trust is not misplaced, Mirkovitch," he said quietly, "and our cause and our comrades are not compromised. Give me the necessary funds, and the right to dispose of them, and I swear to you that three days hence I will hand over our papers safely in your keeping, to act with as you please after that, both with them... and with me."
"You know, then, where the candlesticks are at this moment?" said Mirkovitch, somewhat pacified.
"They are to be sold by auction on Thursday next, and we can buy them easily enough."
"Yes! unless fate or Madame Demidoff interposes."
"Madame Demidoff cannot know where the candlesticks are. Grünebaum was arrested half an hour after I saw him. He is not likely to have betrayed his accomplice in London, and she was bound to lose trace of them."
"You must act as you think best, Iván," said Mirkovitch at last; "as you know, we have ample funds, those of the fraternity; and Lobkowitz has placed them all at your disposal. We must trust you yet so far –– "
And he added after a slight pause:
"After that your life is in our hands."
That Iván knew full well. He knew that if harm came to the brotherhood after this, he would not be allowed to suffer or die with them. He knew that they would brand him as a traitor, disown him, revile him, and that he would die alone in the dark, stricken by the dagger of an avenger, and not be thought worthy the common death of the martyrs.
Mirkovitch handed him over the drafts and money Lobkowitz had given him. It represented a large sum, and Iván took it, feeling easy in his mind. The old Russian left him soon after, and Volenski was left alone and in peace to form what plans were needful. The interview with Mirkovitch had been very stormy, and it needed a strong effort of will to collect his faculties in the last great endeavour to save his comrades and himself from the dire catastrophe.
Obviously the first thing to do was to obtain a card to view the contents of 108, Curzon Street, and ascertain whether the Emperor's candlesticks were included among the objects put up for sale. Having assured himself of that all-important fact, his last move was to go to the auction room on Thursday, and, with the help of the funds placed at his disposal, bid for the candlesticks till they became his property.
The first part of his programme he found very easy of execution; the next morning he obtained a card from Messrs. Gideon, Eyre, and Blackwell, and ascertained that the, to him, ill-fated candlesticks were to be among the objects put up for sale on the following day. So far, so good.
There were a great many people examining the furniture and artistic bibelots, of which there were many thousands, but those people were chiefly Jews–dealers probably–and Volenski knew that the sum of money the secret society had placed at his disposal was infinitely beyond what the richest dealer could afford for a single bibelot. His mind, therefore, was perfectly at ease as to the result of next day's sale. When he left the house he stopped on the doorstep one moment to light a cigar; at that moment a carriage stopped too. A lady got out with an admission card in her hand, and, without noticing him, brushed past him and walked into the house. It was Madame Demidoff!
As a matter of fact, it had never for one moment entered Volenski's mind that either Madame Demidoff or the Cardinal could, by any possibility, hear of the whereabouts of the missing candlesticks, and the lady's presence there fell upon him like a thunder-bolt. And yet, what more natural than that she should be here? Two weeks had elapsed since the robbery; Grünebaum had in the meanwhile, as Volenski well knew, been denounced by his accomplice. His premises and books must have been searched, the name of his London accomplice discovered, and Madame Demidoff had no doubt acted in precisely the same manner as he, Volenski, had done himself; and, either through threats or bribery, traced the stolen candlesticks from Davies' shop to the house of Mr. James Hudson.
That her presence there meant the gravest danger to him, Volenski was at once aware. It was absolutely evident now that she had a secret personal interest in the recovery of the candlesticks, or she would never have come to London herself, but sent a clever agent to secure her stolen property.
If she intended to bid for them the next day Volenski felt it would mean the ruin of his hopes. He could now command a very large sum of money in an emergency like the present one, but if report spoke truly, and Madame Demidoff was a paid agent of the Russian government, then her credit would be practically unlimited, and the duel between him and her one for life and death.
Oh! for the power to look twenty-four hours ahead to know the worst at once! One moment he thought of inquiring at every hotel in London for Madame Demidoff, and hearing his fate from her own lips, but, apart from the hopelessness of such a task in a city of such magnitude as London, he felt that the lady might look upon this move as a sign of weakness, and, after all, so full of hope is the human heart, there was just a faint possibility yet that Madame Demidoff had not discovered the secret papers. In that case, the moment she recognised Volenski among the bidders, she would retire from the contest in the belief that he was acting for Cardinal d'Orsay. No! all was not yet lost, and Volenski heaved a deep sigh of relief as he thought that to-morrow would, in any case–whether for good or bad–end this terrible suspense, which, except for a few days of blissful unconsciousness, he had had to endure for two mortal weeks.
But what of Madame Demidoff? She, like Volenski, had been enduring tortures of uncertainty, fear, doubts, hopes, alternately for the last three weeks. Directly after Grünebaum's arrest she had been communicated with by the police, but, to her horror, failed to discover the candlesticks among the articles seized in the Jew's shop. with great difficulty, and only with the help of a large amount of Russian money, she obtained a private interview with the prisoner, who, deeply revengeful at what he thought was Volenski's treachery, most willingly gave her every clue as to the whereabouts of the missing candlesticks.
A great deal more Russian money was needed to induce Isaac Davies to speak about them again; he felt suspicious, and did not like the mystery that seemed to gather round them. He flatly denied, for a long time, any knowledge of them, and it was only hard bribery that induced him to name the client to whom he had sold the candlesticks.
Like Volenski, Madame Demidoff went to the house of Mr. James Hudson, relying on her own often-tried powers of fascination to induce him to give up what she meant to describe as a compromising letter; and, like Volenski, she felt unutterably hopeless on hearing that Mr. Hudson was dead.
A week after that Madame Demidoff had seen the announcement in The Times, and, quite unsuspecting that Volenski was on the same track as herself, felt quite relieved to see that the candlesticks were among the objects put up for sale at 108, Curzon Street. As far as she was concerned it would be a wonderfully easy matter to bid for them, and purchase them at any price.
Chapter XX
A great crowd had already assembled in the dining-room, where the auction was to be held, when Volenski arrived upon the scene.
A number of dealers, mostly Jews, who all seemed to know each other, were quietly arranging among themselves as to which particular lot they each intended to purchase. The sale began punctually at eleven
