Delphi Complete Works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Illustrated) (786 page)

Upon our entrance the company rose and bowed. I could not but remark that my companion attracted no attention, while every eye was turned upon me with a strange mixture of surprise and almost servile respect. A man at the head of the table, who was remarkable for the extreme pallor of his face as contrasted with his blue-black hair and moustache, waved his hand to a seat beside him, and I sat down.

“I need hardly say,” said Mr. Petrokine, “that Gustave Berger, the English agent, is now honouring us with his presence. He is young, indeed, Alexis,” he continued to my pale-faced neighbour, “and yet he is of European reputation.”

“Come, draw it mild!” thought I, adding aloud, “If you refer to me, sir, though I am indeed acting as English agent, my name is not Berger, but Robinson — Mr. Tom Robinson, at your service.”

A laugh ran round the table.

“So be it, so be it,” said the man they called Alexis. “I commend your discretion, most honoured sir. One cannot be too careful. Preserve your English
sobriquet
by all means. I regret that any painful duty should be performed upon this auspicious evening; but the rules of our association must be preserved at any cost to our feelings, and a dismissal is inevitable to-night.”

“What the deuce is the fellow driving at?” thought I. “What is it to me if he does give his servant the sack? This Dimidoff, wherever he is, seems to keep a private lunatic asylum.”

“
Take out the gag!
” The words fairly shot through me, and I started in my chair. It was Petrokine who spoke. For the first time I noticed that a burly stout man, sitting at the other end of the table, had his arms tied behind his chair and a handkerchief round his mouth. A horrible suspicion began to creep into my heart. Where was I? Was I in Mr. Dimidoff’s? Who were these men, with their strange words?

“Take out the gag!” repeated Petrokine; and the handkerchief was removed.

“Now, Paul Ivanovitch,” said he, “what have you to say before you go?”

“Not a dismissal, sirs,” he pleaded; “not a dismissal: anything but that! I will go into some distant land, and my mouth shall be closed for ever. I will do anything that the society asks; but pray, pray do not dismiss me.”

“You know our laws, and you know your crime,” said Alexis, in a cold, harsh voice. “Who drove us from Odessa by his false tongue and his double face? Who wrote the anonymous letter to the Governor? Who cut the wire that would have destroyed the arch-tyrant? You did, Paul Ivanovitch; and you must die.”

I leaned back in my chair and fairly gasped.

“Remove him!” said Petrokine; and the man of the droschky, with two others, forced him out.

I heard the footsteps pass down the passage, and then a door open and shut. Then came a sound as of a struggle, ended by a heavy, crunching blow and a dull thud.

“So perish all who are false to their oath,” said Alexis solemnly; and a hoarse “Amen” went up from his companions.

“Death alone can dismiss us from our order,” said another man further down; “but Mr. Berg — Mr. Robinson is pale. The scene has been too much for him after his long journey from England.”

“Oh, Tom, Tom,” thought I, “if ever you get out of this scrape you’ll turn over a new leaf. You’re not fit to die, and that’s a fact.” It was only too evident to me now that by some strange misconception I had got in among a gang of cold-blooded Nihilists, who mistook me for one of their order. I felt, after what I had witnessed, that my only chance of life was to try to play the
rôle
thus forced upon me until an opportunity for escape should present itself; so I tried hard to regain my air of self-possession, which had been so rudely shaken.

“I am indeed fatigued,” I replied; “but I feel stronger now. Excuse my momentary weakness.”

“It was but natural,” said a man with a thick beard at my right hand. “And now, most honoured sir, how goes the cause in England?”

“Remarkably well,” I answered.

“Has the great commissioner condescended to send a missive to the Solteff branch?” asked Petrokine.

“Nothing in writing,” I replied.

“But he has spoken of it?”

“Yes: he said he had watched it with feelings of the liveliest satisfaction,” I returned.

“‘Tis well! ‘tis well!” ran round the table.

I felt giddy and sick from the critical nature of my position. Any moment a question might be asked which would show me in my true colours. I rose and helped myself from a decanter of brandy which stood on a side table. The potent liquor flew to my excited brain, and as I sat down I felt reckless enough to be half amused at my position, and inclined to play with my tormentors. I still, however, had all my wits about me.

“You have been to Birmingham?” asked the man with the beard.

“Many times,” said I.

“Then you have of course seen the private workshop and arsenal?”

“I have been over them both more than once.”

“It is still, I suppose, entirely unsuspected by the police?” continued my interrogator.

“Entirely,” I replied.

“Can you tell us how it is that so large a concern is kept so completely secret?”

Here was a poser; but my native impudence and the brandy seemed to come to my aid.

“That is information,” I replied, “which I do not feel justified in divulging even here. In withholding it I am acting under the direction of the chief commissioner.”

“You are right — perfectly right,” said my original friend Petrokine. “You will no doubt make your report to the central office at Moscow before entering into such details.”

“Exactly so,” I replied, only too happy to get a lift out of my difficulty.

“We have heard,” said Alexis, “that you were sent to inspect the
Livadia
. Can you give us any particulars about it?”

“Anything you ask I will endeavour to answer,” I replied, in desperation.

“Have any orders been made in Birmingham concerning it?”

“None when I left England.”

“Well, well, there’s plenty of time yet,” said the man with the beard—”many months. Will the bottom be of wood or iron?”

“Of wood,” I answered at random.

“‘Tis well!” said another voice. “And what is the breadth of the Clyde below Greenock?”

“It varies much,” I replied; “on an average about eighty yards.”

“How many men does she carry?” asked an anæmic-looking youth at the foot of the table, who seemed more fit for a public school than this den of murder.

“About three hundred,” said I.

“A floating coffin!” said the young Nihilist, in a sepulchral voice.

“Are the store-rooms on a level with or underneath the state-cabins?” asked Petrokine.

“Underneath,” said I decisively, though I need hardly say I had not the smallest conception.

“And now, most honoured sir,” said Alexis, “tell us what was the reply of Bauer, the German socialist, to Ravinsky’s proclamation.”

Here was a deadlock with a vengeance. Whether my cunning would have extricated me from it or not was never decided, for Providence hurried me from one dilemma into another and a worse one.

A door slammed downstairs, and rapid footsteps were heard approaching. Then came a loud tap outside, followed by two smaller ones.

“The sign of the society!” said Petrokine; “and yet we are all present; who can it be?”

The door was thrown open, and a man entered, dusty and travel-stained, but with an air of authority and power stamped on every feature of his harsh but expressive face. He glanced round the table, scanning each countenance carefully. There was a start of surprise in the room. He was evidently a stranger to them all.

“What means this intrusion, sir?” said my friend with the beard.

“Intrusion!” said the stranger. “I was given to understand that I was expected, and had looked forward to a warmer welcome from my fellow-associates. I am personally unknown to you, gentlemen, but I am proud to think that my name should command some respect among you. I am Gustave Berger, the agent from England, bearing letters from the chief commissioner to his well-beloved brothers of Solteff.”

One of their own bombs could hardly have created greater surprise had it been fired in the midst of them. Every eye was fixed alternately on me and upon the newly-arrived agent.

“If you are indeed Gustave Berger,” said Petrokine, “who is this?”

“That I am Gustave Berger these credentials will show,” said the stranger, as he threw a packet upon the table. “Who that man may be I know not; but if he has intruded himself upon the lodge under false pretences, it is clear that he must never carry out of the room what he has learned. Speak, sir,” he added, addressing me: “who and what are you?”

I felt that my time had come. My revolver was in my hip-pocket; but what was that against so many desperate men? I grasped the butt of it, however, as a drowning man clings to a straw, and I tried to preserve my coolness as I glanced round at the cold, vindictive faces turned towards me.

“Gentlemen,” I said, “the
rôle
I have played to-night has been a purely involuntary one on my part. I am no police spy, as you seem to suspect; nor, on the other hand, have I the honour to be a member of your association. I am an inoffensive corn-dealer, who by an extraordinary mistake has been forced into this unpleasant and awkward position.”

I paused for a moment. Was it my fancy that there was a peculiar noise in the street — a noise as of many feet treading softly? No, it had died away; it was but the throbbing of my own heart.

“I need hardly say,” I continued, “that anything I may have heard to-night will be safe in my keeping. I pledge my solemn honour as a gentleman that not one word of it shall transpire through me.”

The senses of men in great physical danger become strangely acute, or their imagination plays them curious tricks. My back was towards the door as I sat, but I could have sworn that I heard heavy breathing behind it. Was it the three minions whom I had seen before in the performance of their hateful functions, and who, like vultures, had sniffed another victim?

I looked round the table. Still the same hard, cruel faces. Not one glance of sympathy. I cocked the revolver in my pocket.

There was a painful silence, which was broken by the harsh, grating voice of Petrokine.

“Promises are easily made and easily broken,” he said. “There is but one way of securing eternal silence. It is our lives or yours. Let the highest among us speak.”

“You are right, sir,” said the English agent; “there is but one course open. He must be dismissed.”

I knew what that meant in their confounded jargon, and sprang to my feet.

“By Heaven,” I shouted, putting my back against the door, “you shan’t butcher a free Englishman like a sheep! The first among you who stirs, drops!”

A man sprang at me. I saw along the sights of my Derringer the gleam of a knife and the demoniacal face of Gustave Berger. Then I pulled the trigger, and, with his hoarse scream sounding in my ears, I was felled to the ground by a crashing blow from behind. Half unconscious, and pressed down by some heavy weight, I heard the noise of shouts and blows above me, and then I fainted away.

When I came to myself I was lying among the
débris
of the door, which had been beaten in on the top of me. Opposite were a dozen of the men who had lately sat in judgment upon me, tied two and two, and guarded by a score of Russian soldiers. Beside me was the corpse of the ill-fated English agent, the whole face blown in by the force of the explosion. Alexis and Petrokine were both lying on the floor like myself, bleeding profusely.