impersonation!

I waited a while, till I judged it safe to start on the first stage of
my expedition. I meant to take a circuitous route to the cafe, in case I
was still being watched. I would run no unnecessary risks, not for my
own sake, but I guessed that the success of our enterprise--whatever it
was--would depend on the exercise of infinite caution, at the beginning,
anyhow. I felt strangely elated, happier than I had done for many a long
day; although I knew that the worst, or almost the worst, had come to
pass, and that Anne was here, in the power of her enemies. But we were
going to save her,--we would save her. "A forlorn hope" even Loris
Solovieff had called it. Nothing of the kind. Could anything that such a
man as he attempted be a forlorn hope; and together, working loyally
side by side, what could we not dare, and accomplish? Nothing seemed
impossible to-night.

"Merely an earth to cleave, a sea to part!"

I kept a wary lookout as I made my way along the streets, most of them
thronged at this hour of the summer evening. The air was sultry, and
huge masses of cloud were piling up, ominous of a storm before long.

I reached the cafe eventually and, so far as I knew, unobserved, and
came out of it an hour or so later, looking, I hope, as like a shabbily
attired Russian student as the Grand Duke Loris looked like a droshky
driver, accompanied by a man of the artisan type, who might have been my
father,--none other than Mishka himself.

The sky was overcast, and already, above the rumble of the traffic, one
could hear the mutter of distant thunder. It reminded me of that
eventful night in London, little more than a month ago, though I had
seemed to live a lifetime since then.

"The storm comes soon," said Mishka. "That is well, very well."

We came to a rank where several droshkys were standing; and he paused
irresolute, fumbling in his pocket.

"We will drive, Paul," he asserted aloud, with the air of a man who has
just decided to indulge in an extravagance. "Yes, I say we will; the
storm comes soon, and thy mother is alone."

He began to haggle, after the usual fashion, with the nearest driver;
and again I marvelled at the Duke's disguise; for it was he, of course.

Once clear of the city Mishka unfolded the plan.

"Presently we turn across country and come to a house; there we leave
the droshky; and there also will be horses for us in readiness if we
should need them--later. Thence we go on foot