William Le Queux - The Price of Power

“Yes, Uncle Colin. I feared lest some spy might find them, so I went up to my old nursery on the top floor of the Palace – a room which has not been used for years. In it stands my old doll’s house – a big, dusty affair as tall as myself. I opened it and placed the packet in the little wardrobe in one of the doll’s bedrooms. It is still there. I saw it only yesterday.”

“Be very careful that no spy watches you going to that disused room. You cannot exercise too much caution in this affair,” I urged seriously.

“I am always cautious,” she assured me. “I distrust more than one of our servants, for I believe some of them to be in Markoff’s pay. All that we do at home is carried at once to the Emperor, while I am watched at every turn.”

“True; only we foreign diplomats are exempt from this pestilential surveillance and the clever plots of the horde of agents-provocateurs controlled by the all-powerful Markoff.”

“But what shall I do, Uncle Colin?” asked the girl, her white hands clasped in her lap.

“If you think it wise to place the letter before the Emperor, I should certainly lose no time in doing so,” I replied. “It may soon be too late. Spies will leave no hole or corner in your father’s palace unexamined.”

“You think there really is urgency?” she asked.

I looked my charming companion straight in the face and replied:

“I do. If you value your life, then I would urge you at once to get rid of the packet which poor Madame de Rosen entrusted to you.”

“But I cannot place it before the Emperor just at present,” the girl exclaimed. “I promised secrecy to Marya de Rosen.”

“Then you knew something of the subject to which those letters refer – eh?”

“I know something of it.”

“Why not pass them on to me? They will be quite secure here in the Embassy safe. Russian spies dire not enter here – upon this bit of British soil.”

“A good idea,” she said quickly. “I will. I’ll go home and bring them back to you.”

And in a few minutes she rose and with a merry laugh left me to descend to her carriage, which was waiting out upon the quay.

I stood looking out of the window as she drove away. I was thinking – thinking seriously over the Emperor’s strange apprehension.

Two visitors followed her, the French naval attaché, and afterwards old Madame Neilidoff, the Society leader of Moscow, who called to congratulate me upon my escape, and to invite me to spend my convalescence at her country estate at Sukova. With the stout, ugly old lady, who spake French with a dreadfully nasal intonation and possessed a distinct moustache, I chatted for nearly an hour, as we sipped our tea with lemon, when almost as soon as she had taken her departure the door was flung open unceremoniously and the Grand Duchess Natalia burst in, her beautiful face blanched to the lips.

“Uncle Colin! Something horrible has happened; Those letters have gone!” she gasped in a hoarse whisper, staring at me.

“Gone!” I echoed, starting to my feet in dismay.

“Yes. They’ve been stolen – stolen !”

In the golden September sunset, the long, wide promenade stretching beside the blue sea from Brighton towards the fashionable suburb of Hove was agog with visitors.

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