William Le Queux - The Price of Power

It all occurred in a single instant, and I knew no more. I had a distinct feeling that some terrific explosion had knocked the breath clean out of my body. I recollect seeing the carriage rent into a thousand fragments just at the same instant that black unconsciousness fell upon me.

When, with extreme difficulty, I slowly struggled back to a knowledge of things about me, I found myself, to my great surprise, in a narrow hospital-bed, with a holy ikon upon the whitewashed wall before me, and a Red Cross sister bending tenderly over me.

Beside her stood two Russian doctors regarding me very gravely, and at their side was Saunderson, our Councillor of Embassy.

“Well, how are you feeling now, Colin, old man?” the latter whispered cheerfully.

“I – I don’t know. Where am I?” I asked. “What’s happened?”

“My dear fellow, you can thank your lucky stirs that you’ve escaped from the bomb,” he said.

“The bomb!” I gasped, and then in a flash all the horrors of that sudden explosion crowded upon me. “What happened?” I inquired, trying to raise myself, and finding my head entirely enveloped in surgical bandages. “What happened to the others?”

“The Grand Duke was, alas! killed, but his daughter fortunately escaped only with a scratch on her arm,” was his reply. “The carriage was blown to atoms, the two horses and their driver and footman were killed, while three Cossacks of the escort were also killed and two injured.”

“Then – then she – she is alive!” I managed to gasp, dazed at the tragic truth he had related to me.

“Yes – it was a desperate attempt. Fifteen arrests have been made up to the present.”

And while he was speaking, Captain Stoyanovitch advanced to my bedside, and leaning over, asked in a low voice:

“How are you, Trewinnard? The Emperor has sent me to inquire.”

“Tell His Majesty that I – I thank him. I’m getting round – I – I hope I’ll soon be well. I – I – ”

“That’s right. Take great care of yourself, mon cher ,” he urged.

And then the doctors ordered my visitors away, and I sank among my pillows into a state of semi-consciousness.

How long I lay thus I do not know. I remember seeing soldiers come and go, and at length discovered that I was in the hospital attached to the artillery barracks on the road to Warsaw Station. Beside me always sat a grave-eyed nursing sister, silent and watchful, while ever and anon one or other of the doctors would approach, bend over me, and inquire of her my condition.

Saunderson came again some hours later. It was then night. And from him, now that I was completely conscious, I learnt how, after the explosion, the police had in the confusion shot down two men, afterwards proved to be innocent spectators, and made wholesale indiscriminate arrests. It was believed, however, that the man I had seen, the perpetrator of the dastardly act, had escaped scot-free.

Dozens of windows in the market-hall opposite where the outrage was committed had been smashed, and many people besides the killed and injured had been thrown down by the terrific force of the explosion.

“The poor Grand Duke Nicholas has, alas! been shattered out of recognition,” he told me. “His body was taken at once to his palace, where it now lies, while you were brought here together with the Grand Duchess Natalia. But her wound being quite a slight one, was dressed, and she was driven at once to the Winter Palace, at the order of the Emperor. Poor child! I hear that she is utterly prostrated by the fearful sight which her father presented to her eyes.”

I drew a long breath.

“I suppose I was struck on the head by some of the débris and knocked insensible – eh?” I asked.

“Yes, probably,” he replied. “But the doctors say the wound is only a superficial one, and in a week’s time you’ll be quite right again. So cheer up, old chap. You’ll get the long leave which you put in for the other day, and a bit more added to it, no doubt.”

“But this state of things is terrible,” I declared, shifting myself upon my side so that I could better look into his face. “Surely the revolutionists could have had no antagonism towards the Grand Duke Nicholas! He was most popular everywhere.”

“My dear fellow, who can gauge the state of the Russian mind at this moment? Plots seem to be of daily occurrence.”

“If you believe the reports of the Secret Police. But I, for one, don’t,” I declared frankly.

“No, no,” he said reprovingly. “Don’t excite yourself. Be thankful that you’ve escaped. You might have shared the same fate as those poor Cossacks.”

“I know,” I said. “I thank God that I was spared. But it will be in the London papers, no doubt. Reuter’s man will send it; therefore, will you wire to my mother at once. You know her address – Hayford Manor, near Newquay, Cornwall. Wire in my name, and tell her that the affair is greatly exaggerated, and that I’m all right, will you?”

He promised.

I knew with what eagerness my aged mother always followed all my movements, for I made it a practice to write to her twice every week with a full report of my doings. I was as devoted to her as she was to me. And perhaps that accounted for the fact that I had never married. My father, the Honourable Colin Trewinnard, had been one of the largest landowners in Cornwall, and my family was probably one of the oldest in the county. But evil times had fallen upon the estate in the last years of my father’s life; depreciation in the value of agricultural land, failing crops and foreign competition had ruined farming, and now the income was not one-half that it had been fifty years before. Yet it was sufficient to keep my mother and myself in comfort; and this, in addition to my pay from the Foreign Office, rendered me better off than a great many other men in our Service.

Through Stoyanovitch, on the following morning, I received a message from Natalia. He said:

“Her Highness, whom I saw in the Palace an hour ago, told me to say that she sent you her best wishes for a speedy recovery. She is greatly grieved over the death of her father, and, of course, the Court has gone into mourning for sixty days. She told me to tell you that as soon as you are able to return to the Embassy she wishes to see you on a very important matter.”

“Tell her that I am equally anxious to see her, and that she has all my sympathy in her sad bereavement,” I replied.

“Terrible, wasn’t it?” the Imperial equerry exclaimed. “The poor girl looks white, haggard and entirely changed.”

“No wonder – after such an awful experience.”

“There were, I hear, twenty more arrests to-day. Markoff had audience with His Majesty at ten o’clock this morning, and eight of the prisoners of yesterday have been sent to Schusselburg.”

“From which they will never emerge,” I said, with a shudder at the thought of that living tomb as full of horrors as was the Bastille itself.

“Well, I don’t see why they should, my dear friend,” the Captain replied. “If I had had such an experience as yours, I shouldn’t feel very lenient towards them – as you apparently do.”

“I am not thinking of the culprit,” I said. “He certainly deserves a death-sentence. It is the innocents who, here in Russia, suffer for the guilty, with whom I deeply sympathise. Every day unoffending men and women are arrested wholesale in this drastic, unrelenting sweeping away of prisoners to Siberia. I tell you that half of them are loyal, law-abiding subjects of the Tzar.”

The elegant equerry-in-waiting only grinned and shrugged his shoulders. He was too good a Russian to adopt such an argument. As personal attendant upon His Majesty, he, of course, supported the Imperial autocracy.