was far from tottering.
And Iván dreamed with the dreamers and plotted with the plotters, eager to help, yet shrinking from decisive action.
He had discovered the Tsarevitch's proposed incognito journey to Vienna and the opera ball. He was a young man of fashion in society, invaluable to the Socialists, for he went everywhere, heard all the gossip, and repeated to them what they wished to hear.
He planned out the abduction in all its details. Mirkovitch was to lend his house, in which to receive the captive, and his daughter was to entice him therein. Baloukine and his brother were to watch the proceedings. After that, he, Iván, would do something perilous, all alone, he cared not what, as long as he did not have to lend a hand in abducting a helpless youth into a dangerous trap.
Nicholas Alexandrovitch had fallen into that trap, with his eyes shut, wholly unsuspecting. It had been well set at the time and place where most young men, be they prince or peasant, are eager for adventures, and the Tsarevitch was barely twenty, and had come the Vienna to enjoy himself.
The bright eyes of the odalisque, as seen through her black velvet mask; seemed full of promise of enjoyment to come; her manners essentially Viennese, were provoking to the verge of distraction, and human nature, ever disguised in the garb of the heir to an empire, would have to undergo very radical changes, ere at twenty years of age it could resist the blandishments of so enterprising an odalisque.
He had jumped into the fiaker after her, only thinking of those bright eyes and provoking ways, and the short journey between the opera house and Huemarkt only ended in more complete turning that young head, and subjugating the inflammable heart; for, during those five minutes, Nicholas had succeeded in dislodging the black velvet mask, and in ascertaining that the charms that it held hidden were equally enchanting as those it had revealed. Perhaps had been less young, and therefore more observant, he would not have failed to notice that a slightly sarcastic hovered round the dainty, childlike mouth and a look–was it of pity?–gave those bright eyes an added charm.
The fiaker had stopped under a portico, that would have seemed dreary and desolate, beyond description, to the most casual observer, but Nicholas Alexandrovitch flew up the great, dark, stone staircase with no thought save for the dainty figure that ran swiftly up some few mètres in front of him. He followed her through a massive door, behind which he had seen her disappear, and found himself in a brilliantly-lighted, dome-like hall, where a well-laden supper-table occupied the centre, looking most tempting, whilst a valet, in irreproachable attitude, mute and expectant, stood by.
As the heavy door fell to behind him, with a loud and reverberating crash, Nicholas Alexandrovitch, looking around him, realised that the fair odalisque had once more disappeared.
A door at the opposite end of the hall was open; Nicholas passed through it, to find himself in a comfortably furnished bedroom, obviously arranged for a bachelor's wants. It seemed to have no other egress but the door at which the Tsarevitch stood still, amazed, wondering where that bewitching houri had given him the slip. Somewhere on that dark, stone staircase no doubt, and Nicholas pondered as to whether he should endeavour to follow her in that game of hide-and-seek which she appeared to have at her fingers' ends, or calmly await her return, which could, obviously, not be long delayed.
The valet still stood, correct in attitude and dress, mute and expectant. His intense impassiveness grated on the young prince's turbulent nerves, strung to aching point whilst waiting for the odalisque who did not reappear.
Then it began to strike him as strange, that though the supper appeared sumptuous and plentiful, it had only been laid for one; for the unknown odalisque no doubt; but then, the bedroom adjoining was obviously not a lady's room. Nicholas frowned, and forced his nerves to be still, and his brains to recommence to act; a breath of suspicion–the first–seemed to have crossed his mind. He walked deliberately to the door–it was locked. It did not surprise him, the breath of suspicion had suddenly developed into a hurricane of doubt.
"Where am I?" he asked the valet.
The latter bowed very humbly and pointed to his own ears and mouth, shaking his head the while.
"Real or assumed?" was the Tsarevitch's mental query.
Obviously it was no use to try and force that door, it looked solid enough to resist an assault. Nicholas understood that he had been trapped, for what purpose remained yet to be proven.
A few moments elapsed, then the door was gently open from without; the deaf-mute valet went up towards it. The thought of making a rush for that same door may have presented itself to Nicholas' mind then, but fortunately the humiliation of an unsuccessful attempt was spared him, for behind the door stood two stalwart moujiks, equally mute as their comrade, and equally correct in bearing; one of them stepped forward, and with deep obeisance presented a letter to the Tsarevitch, who tore it open impatiently.
A few words only, to tell him what he already knew, that he was a helpless prisoner without hope of escape. His life inviolate, but held as hostage, pending negotiations with his exalted father, which no doubt would soon terminate in a most satisfactory way. And in the meanwhile the lodgings, poor as they were, were entirely at the august prisoner's disposal, as well as three deaf-mute moujiks told off to do his bidding.
Nicholas Alexandrovitch called himself a fool, then tried to become a philosopher. He had every confidence in the far-seeing, far-reaching police of his country, trusted to Lavrovski to use every effort and every dispatch, and resigned himself to the inevitable with the character placidity of his race. One last tribute to youth and folly he paid, when he felt an aching pang at the thought that the provoking odalisque had only used her blandishments for purposes so far removed from his poetic imagination. The next half-hour saw the heir of the Tsar of all the Russias eating a sumptuous supper all alone–and a prisoner–with a youthful appetite, and no thoughts for the morrow.
As for Count Lavrovski, in attendance upon his Imperial Highness, he, no doubt, was in a worst position then his abducted charge.
To have allowed the Tsarevitch, for whom he was, so to speak, responsible, to so completely slip through his fingers, was an event unparalleled in the history of a Russian courtier. No doubt, the case being unprecedented, the punishment would be equally so, and Lavrovski already, half an hour after the Tsarevitch's disappearance, could, when shutting his eyes, see visions of convicts, of prisons, of mines, and Siberia.
Half an hour is a long time for the son of the Tsar to remain unattended, and when two or three hours had slipped by, and the crowds of mummers had begun to thin, Lavrovski began to enduring mental tortures he had up to that time had no conception of. And when presently, at some small hour of the morning, the last of the giddy throng were preparing to depart, the old Russian still sat staring into the crowd, cramped in body, and with mental faculties rendered numb with nameless terrors.
The officials asked him to leave; the lights were being turned out, and Lavrovski had perforce to leave his box and find his way into the streets. One or two discreet questions to porters and attendants about an odalisque and a domino brought only mirth for an answer. Fifty odalisques, two thousand dominoes, had passed up and down the opera-house steps during the last few hours.
At the Hotel Imperial, the sleepy hall porter had not seen the young stranger, and the Russian valet, the only attendant to the young Tsarevitch, made a mute inquiry as to his master, which he dared not put into words.
The man would have to be told something; he was trustworthy–might be of help. Lavrovski told him half a truth.
The Tsarevitch had thought fit to go on a young man's escapade. They two must keep that a secret; Nicholas Alexandrovitch might return to-morrow, he might be away some days.
Count Lavrovski could not say; he relied on Stepán to be discreet.
The next day, when no news came, the old Russian began to look longingly at a tiny revolver, he always carried with him. Better that, than to be dragged home to Russia, arraigned for high treason, and sent to Irkutsk to dig salt for the Imperial Exchequer, for having neglected his duties as keeper and caretaker of the young heir to the throne.
But