ealed behind it That is the reason why I rather forced
the conversation in English. The rest you know. I am convinced that the
man we captured is the victim of circumstances, and I think I can make
him very valuable."

"Well," acknowledged the prince, "there might have been a man behind
every one of the curtains and I would not have thought to suspect it.
This service alone, Mr. Derrington, is worth all the pay you will draw
from Russia."

"Yes," I replied, "for I believe that the spy will confess to me that
he was sent there with orders to murder the czar."

"My God! And even now there may be others of the same sort in the
palace."

"No; I hardly think that. The nihilists would not be likely to send
more than one at a time on such a dangerous errand."

Moret confessed to me the following day, and I speedily was convinced
that my suppositions concerning him were correct. He had not had the
brutal courage to carry out his orders; and already he had received
several warnings from his compatriots that if another week passed
without his accomplishment of the design, his own life would pay the
forfeit. He was in that room awaiting my arrival when he heard me
approaching with the prince, and had concealed himself behind the
curtain without any definite purpose other than to hear all that he
could.

It is hardly necessary, and there is not space, for me to go into the
details of my subsequent talks with Moret. Suffice it to say that the
information I gleaned in that way, proved of inestimable value to my
work. From it I learned the names of all the leading nihilists of St.
Petersburg and Moscow, their meeting places, their passwords, and
several of their ciphers. Concerning their plans for the future, beyond
those in which he was personally engaged, Moret knew almost nothing;
but he did put me in the way of finding out nearly all that I wished to
know. Nor is it necessary that I should describe my subsequent
interviews with the emperor. My plans were adopted almost without a
correction--and most of those I suggested myself--so that by the time I
had been an inmate of the palace for a week, the reorganization of the
Fraternity of Silence was well under way, and ere a month had passed it
was an established fact.

There was one point upon which Moret stubbornly refused to talk, and
that was concerning the woman who had led him into the difficulty, and
who, he confessed, was the brains and the real head of the society. I