t he had
hitherto befriended, a foe to Poland, a servant to Russia.

Acting secretly and with a strong man's discretion, no bruit of this odd
conversion had been made public, no whisper of it heard in the camp of
the Revolutionaries. Many knew Maxim Gogol--none had heard of Richard
Gessner. His desire for secrecy was in good accord with the plans of a
police he assisted and the bureaucracy he bribed. He lived for a while
in Vienna, then at Tiflis--he came at length to England where his
daughter had been educated; and there he established himself, ostensibly
as a wealthy banker, in reality as the secret director of one of the
greatest conspiracies against the liberty of a little nation that the
world had ever seen.

Upon such a man, the blow of discovery fell with, stunning force.
Gessner had grown so accustomed to the security of this suburban life
that he could imagine no circumstance which might disturb it. All that
he did for the satisfaction of the Russian Government had been cleverly
done by agents and deputies. Entitled by his years to leisure, he had
latterly almost abandoned politics for a culture of the arts and the
sciences, in some branches of which he was a master. His leisure he gave
almost entirely to his daughter. To contrive for her an alliance worthy
of his own fortune and of her beauty had become the absorbing passion of
his life. He studied the Peerage as other men study a balance-sheet.
All sorts and conditions of possible husbands appeared at "Five Gables;"
were dined, discussed, and dismissed. The older families despised him
and would not be appeased. To crown his vexation, his daughter named a
lover for herself. He had twice shown Captain Willy Forrest from the
door and twice had the man returned. Anna seemed fascinated by this
showy adventurer as by none other who visited them. Gessner, for his
part, would sooner have lost the half of his fortune than that she
should have married him.

These vexations had been real enough ten days ago; but, to-night, a
greater made light of them and now they were almost forgotten. Detection
had stalked out of the slums to humble this man in an instant and bring
him to his knees. Gessner could have recited to you the most trivial
detail attending the reception of Paul Boriskoff's letter and the claim
it made upon him--how a secretary had passed it to him with a suggestion
that Scotland Yard should know of it; how he had taken up the scrawl
idly enough to flush