his bidding. As in a flash, he perceived this spar which should save
him, and clutched at it. Let the lad go to Warsaw--let him be the agent.
If the police arrested the girl after all--well, that would be an
accident which he might regret, but certainly would not seek to prevent.
A man whose life is imperilled must be one in ten thousand if any common
dictates of faith or conduct guide him. Richard Gessner had a fear of
death so terrible that he would have dared the uttermost treachery to
save himself.

"Count," he exclaimed suddenly, "your agent is here, in this room. He
will go to Warsaw at your bidding. He will find the girl."

The Count, who knew something of Alban's story already, received the
intimation as though he had expected it.

"It was for that I asked him to wait. I have been thinking of it. He
will go to Warsaw and tell the lady that she may obtain her father's
liberty upon a condition. Let her make a direct appeal to the
Government--and we will consider it. Of course you intend an immediate
departure--you are not contemplating a delay, Herr Gessner?"

"Delay--am I the man to delay? He shall go to-morrow by the first
train."

A smile hovered upon the Count's face in spite of himself.

"In a week," he was saying to himself, "Lois Boriskoff shall be flogged
in the Schusselburg."

In truth, the whip was the weapon he liked best--when women were to be
schooled.

CHAPTER XX

ALBAN GOES TO WARSAW

Alban had never been abroad, and it would have been difficult for him to
give any good account of his journey to Warsaw. The swiftly changing
scenes, the new countries, the uproar and strife of cities, the glamour
of the sea, put upon his ripe imagination so heavy a burden that he
lived as one apart, almost as a dreamer who had forgotten how to dream.
If he carried an abiding impression it was that of the miracle of travel
and the wonders that travel could work. In twenty hours he had almost
forgotten the existence of the England he had left. Chains of bondage
fell from his willing shoulders. He felt as one released from a prison
house to all the freedom of a boundless world.

And so at last he came to the beautiful city of Warsaw and his sterner
task began. Here, as in London, that pleasant person Count Sergius
Zamoyski reminded him how considerable was the service he could confer,
not alone upon his patron but upon the friends of his evil days.

"It has all been a mistake," the Count would say