nded tremulously.

"His majesty the Czar must at once write a duplicate of the despatch,
unknown to any living soul but your majesty, and that despatch must
be placed by you in my hands."

The Dowager Empress gazed at me for a moment in consternation.

But the soundness of the plan I had proposed quickly made itself
manifest to her.

"You are right, Monsieur V----," her majesty said approvingly. "I
will communicate with the Czar without delay. By what time do you
want the despatch?"

"In time to catch the Siberian express to-night, if your majesty
pleases. I purpose to travel by the same train as Colonel Menken--it
is possible I may be able to avert a tragedy.

"And since your majesty has told me that the Princess Y---- is aware
of the Colonel's errand, let me venture to urge you most strongly not
to let her out of your sight on any pretense until he is safely on
his way."

I need not go into the details of the further arrangements made with
a view to my receiving the duplicate despatch in secrecy.

I came away from the Palace fully realizing the serious nature of my
undertaking. I understood now all that had worried me in the
proceedings of the Princess. It was clear to me that Lord Bedale, or
the personage on whose behalf he instructed me, had wired to the
Dowager Empress, notifying her majesty of my coming, and that she had
shown the message to her lady-in-waiting.

Blaming myself bitterly for not having impressed the necessity for
caution on the Marquis, I at once set about providing myself with a
more effectual disguise.

It is a proverb on the lips of every moujik in Petersburg that all
Russia obeys the Czar, and the Czar obeys the Tchin. Ever since the
bureaucracy deliberately allowed Alexander II. to be assassinated by
the Nihilists out of anger at his reforming tendencies, the Russian
monarchs have felt more real dread of their own police than of the
revolutionists. The _Tchin_, the universally-pervading body of
officials, who run the autocracy to fill their pockets, and indulge
their vile propensities at the expense of the governed, is as
omnipotent as it is corrupt. Everywhere in that vast Empire the word
of the Tchinovink is law--and there is no other law except his word.

Taking the bull by the horns, I went straight to the Central Police
Bureau of the capital, and asked to see a certain superintendent
named Rostoy.

To this man, with whom I had had some dealings on a previous
occasion, and