believed that he had been ruined by the ill-success of
the war, and had gone into hiding from his creditors. Others supposed
that he had been secretly arrested.

Some of his fellow-plotters in the Russian capital imagined that he
had fled to Germany to escape the penalty of his treason. In Germany,
on the other hand, I afterward learned, he was supposed to have been
sent to Siberia by order of the Czar.

For weeks the "Disappearance of M. Petrovitch" was the general topic
of discussion in the newspapers and in private circles; but no one
came near guessing the truth.

There was one person who must have divined from the first what had
happened. But she held her tongue.

So far as I could gather from the reports which continued to reach me
from Fauchette, the Princess Y---- had sunk into a lethargy after my
evasion. She seemed to wish only to be left alone to brood, perhaps
to mourn.

The only sign she gave was by depositing a wreath on the empty grave
in the English cemetery, a wreath which bore the solitary word,
"Remembrance."

In the meanwhile I had gratifying evidence that the loss of the chief
conspirator had completely disorganized the schemes of the plotters
in the Ministry of Marine.

My first proceeding, after disconnecting the powerful battery which I
had installed in my house for the purpose of the execution, was to
summon my assistant Breuil.

With his aid, the corpse was stripped and sewn up in a sheet,
together with some heavy weights. In the middle of the night it was
committed to the waters of the Neva, almost within sight and sound of
the fleet.

The papers which we found in his clothes were not numerous or
important. But there was one which I thought worth preserving.

It was a passport, made out in the name of the deceased, issued by
the Russian Foreign Office, and vised by the German Ambassador. This
passport I still have in my possession.

I now disclosed to my assistant a plan which had been in my own mind
for some time, though, true to my principle of never making an
unnecessary confidence, I had not previously mentioned it to him.

"I have decided," I told him, "to assume the personality of
Petrovitch."

Breuil stared at me in consternation. It is only fair to say that he
had not been with me very long.

I could see that some objection was trembling on the tip of his
tongue. He had learned, however, that I expect my staff not to
criticize, but to obey.

"You may speak," I sa