you go before?"
"Impossible! The Nuncio leaves Vienna the day after to-morrow. I shall be forced to remain twenty-four hours longer to finish and classify his correspondence, after that I am free and can start immediately."
"Let Iván act as he thinks best," said the president; "not one of us could cross the fr0ontier as safely as he, and a delay of three days is so dangerous as the entrusting of the papers to anyone else."
"So far I have never been suspected," said Volenski reassuringly; "true, those brutes on the frontier did seize and search all my papers once," he added sullenly; "that was after Dunajewski's arrest, when every Pole was an object of that type of tyranny. Fortunately I was not carrying anything compromising then."
"And this time?" asked an anxious voice.
"I shall take the precaution of wrapping our papers in an envelope which I shall stamp with the seal of the Papal Legation. My position is well known, and the papers will be safe enough."
"Fairly safe, shall we say?" retorted a grim voice from the further end of the room.
"Anyhow, it is obvious that we can have no safer messenger then Iván," decided the president; "his is the only plan that promises the slightest measure of safety."
A general murmur of approval confirmed his decision.
"In four days, then, from now, I pledge to you my word that these papers will be handed over by me to Taranïew and the Petersburg committee," said the young Pole with fervour, "together with the news of the glorious act we have accomplished to-night, which is to result in the freedom of Dunajewski and our other comrades, whom we had looked on as lost. And will you tell me now, as my duties with his Eminence may prevent my seeing you before I start, what you propose to do in the meanwhile?"
"There is very little we can do," said the president; "some of us will watch Lavrovski; others, Madame Demidoff. If there is the slightest suspicion of them moving in the matter and calling in police aid, we will convey to them the same warning that Taranïew will submit at headquarters."
"Remember, Volenski," added another member of the committee, "that our anxiety for the safety of our papers and of you, our messenger, will have reached its culmination point on the fourth day from this; and that if you can do so with prudence, try to communicate with us as soon as you have seen Taranïew."
"I will certainly do so," said Iván. "Never fear, the papers will be quite safe; as soon as I have delivered them I shall find my way towards the frontier, where I shall await Dunajewski and our comrades with the money, the committee has entrusted me with, for them. They will be in need of that, moreover, I shall be very happy to shake hands with them and tell them–for they shall be ignorant of it–how we effected there release."
The discussion was closed now; cigarettes and pipes appeared once more, and with a quiet hum of conversation, where no mention of plot or Tsar was made, took the place of enthusiastic discussion. The president was chatting quietly with Volenski, who had slipped the precious papers into his breast-pocket.
Iván was the first to rise.
"I must leave you all now," he said. "When we meet again it will be on my return from Petersburg, when our great work is all complete, and Dunajewski with our comrades are free once more to join us in studying how best to accomplish the weal of Russia and of her people. Good night, all."
"Good night!"
"God-speed!"
A score of hands were stretched out towards him, their friend, their comrade. In the minds of some of them, perhaps, there rose the thought that they might never see their daring messenger again; but these, who had these thoughts, were the older men–those who knew that no scrap of paper is ever really safe in Russia. Inwardly they called forth a blessing, and perhaps a prayer for his safety, as he shook hands with all his friends.
They were all preparing to depart, as they obviously could discuss nothing further that evening, and most of them, though Socialist at heart, were also young besides, and longed to take a last glance at the merrily lighted streets of the city, the gay festivities of the Carnival.
And ten minutes later these men who had so daringly organised, so successfully carried through, one of the most audacious plots in the annals of secret societies, were mixing gaily with the mad throng, bandying jests with merry masks, and seemingly forgetting that there were such things as princely hostages and secret missions, or that one of their comrades, their chosen messenger, would soon–holding all of their lives in his hands–have to convey their secrets to Petersburg, in the very teeth of the most astute police in the world.
Chapter IV
Iván Volenski has spoken gaily, reassuringly to them all. But what did he know of his own chances of safety across the Russian frontier? Practically nothing.
Suspect? Bah! Anybody might at the moment become "suspect" to the Russian police. And then, … that anybody's name is placed on the list. … After that let him try to get across with papers, valuables, secrets, and he will soon find what it means to be a "suspect."
What did Volenski know of how he stood in the eyes of the Russian police? Living mostly abroad and consorting in a great measure with his own exiled countrymen, some small degree of suspicion was bound to remain attached to his name.
He was a Pole, and, being a Pole, he conspired, not because he believed in all the Utopian theories set forth by his brother conspirators, but because it was in his blood to plot and plan against the existing government.
Whether these plots and plans ever resulted in anything tangible, any great reform out there in Russia, he never troubled his mind much to think. He was too young to think of the future; the present was the only important factor in his existence.
He usually shrank from extreme measures. Mirkovitch's bloodthirsty speeches grated upon his nerves, and having spent a miracle of ingenuity in combining some deadly plot that would annihilate the tyrant and his brood, Iván would have preferred that it should not be carried out at all, but left as a record of what a Pole's mind can devise against his hated conquerors.
It was not indecision; it was horror of a refined and even plucky nature, of deeds that would not brook the light of day. He would have liked to lead a Polish insurrection, but feared to handle an assassin's dagger.
He had vague theories about the "People," lofty notions of their immense brain power, downtrodden by powerful officialism, and he looked forward to the days when that somewhat undefinable quality would frame its own laws, appoint its own rulers. How that great object was to be accomplished he had no practical notions; Mirkovitch said, by killing those in power; Lobkowitz, their much decorated president, said, by careful diplomacy and an occasional wholesome fright. The younger men dreamed, and the older ones plotted, and still the throne of the Romanoffs 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