s and then to Abo, and on here. At
that time I did not see the dastardly trap he had laid in order to get
me out of the Baron's clutches and wring from me my secret. If I
confess, he intends to give me up to the police, who will send me to the
mines."

"Does your secret concern him?" I asked in writing.

"Yes," she wrote in response. "It would be equally in his interests as
well as those of Baron Oberg if I were sent to Saghalien and my identity
effaced. I am a Russian subject, as I have already told you, therefore
with a Ministerial order against me I am in deadliest peril."

"Trust in me," I scribbled quickly. "I will act upon any suggestion you
make. Have you any female friend in whom you could trust to hide you
until this danger is past?"

"There is one friend--a true friend. Will you take a note to her?" she
wrote, to which I instantly nodded in the affirmative.

Then rising, she obtained some ink and pen and wrote a letter, the
contents of which she did not show me before she sealed it. I sat
watching her beautiful head bent beneath the shaded lamplight, catching
her profile and noticing how eminently handsome it was, superb and
unblemished in her youthful womanhood.

I watched her write the superscription upon the envelope: "Madame Olga
Stassulevitch, modiste, Scredni Prospect, 231, Vasili Ostroff." I knew
that the district was on the opposite side of the city, close to the
Little Neva.

"Take a drosky at once, see her, and await a reply. In the meantime, I
will prepare to be ready when you return," she wrote. "If Olga is not at
home, ask to see the Red Priest--in Russian, '_Krasny-pastor_.' Return
quickly, as I fear Woodroffe may come back. If so, I am lost."

I assured her I would not lose a single instant, and five minutes later
I was tearing down the Morskaya in a drosky along the canal and across
the Nicholas Bridge to the address upon the envelope.

The house was, I found, somewhat smaller than its neighbors, but not let
out in flats as the others. Upon the door was a large brass plate
bearing the name, "Olga Stassulevitch: modes." I pressed the electric
button, and in answer a tall, clean-shaven Russian servant opened the
door.

"Madame is not at home," was his brief reply to my inquiry.

"Then I will see the Red Priest," I said in a lower tone. "I come from
Elma Heath." Thereupon, without further word, the man admitted me into
the long, dark hall and closed the door with an apology that the g