← catalogue

The Angel of the Revolution: A Tale of the Coming Terror

by George Chetwynd Griffith · English · Gutenberg #31324 · 835,772 chars · public domain (US)

The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Angel of the Revolution: A Tale of the Coming Terror
    
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.

Title: The Angel of the Revolution: A Tale of the Coming Terror

Author: George Chetwynd Griffith

Illustrator: Fred T. Jane


        
Release date: February 18, 2010 [eBook #31324]
                Most recently updated: January 6, 2021

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/31324

Credits: Produced by Bruce Albrecht, Michael Roe and the Online
        Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net.


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ANGEL OF THE REVOLUTION: A TALE OF THE COMING TERROR ***




Produced by Bruce Albrecht, Michael Roe and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net.









THE ANGEL OF THE REVOLUTION


MORRISON AND GIBB, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH.

[Illustration: _Drawn by Edwin S. Hope._

NATASHA]




THE ANGEL
OF THE
REVOLUTION

A Tale of the Coming Terror


BY
GEORGE GRIFFITH

_WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY FRED. T. JANE_

FIFTH EDITION

LONDON
TOWER PUBLISHING COMPANY LIMITED
91 MINORIES, E.C.
1894

_Copyrighted Abroad_]    [_All Foreign Rights Reserved_

TO
CYRIL ARTHUR PEARSON
TO WHOSE SUGGESTION
THE WRITING OF THIS STORY
WAS PRIMARILY DUE
THE FOLLOWING PAGES ARE INSCRIBED
BY
THE AUTHOR




CONTENTS.


  CHAP.                                        PAGE

  I. AT THE ELEVENTH HOUR,                       1

  II. AT WAR WITH SOCIETY,                       8

  III. A FRIENDLY CHAT,                         16

  IV. THE HOUSE ON CLAPHAM COMMON,              23

  V. THE INNER CIRCLE,                          30

  VI. NEW FRIENDS,                              37

  VII. THE DAUGHTER OF NATAS,                   46

  VIII. LEARNING THE PART,                      54

  IX. THE BEGINNING OF SORROWS,                 63

  X. THE "ARIEL,"                               70

  XI. FIRST BLOOD,                              78

  XII. IN THE MASTER'S NAME,                    85

  XIII. FOR LIFE OR DEATH,                      91

  XIV. THE PSYCHOLOGICAL MOMENT,                98

  XV. A VOYAGE OF DISCOVERY,                   103

  XVI. A WOOING IN MID-AIR,                    110

  XVII. AERIA FELIX,                           119

  XVIII. A NAVY OF THE FUTURE,                 127

  XIX. THE EVE OF BATTLE,                      135

  XX. BETWEEN TWO LIVES,                       141

  XXI. JUST IN TIME,                           153

  XXII. ARMED NEUTRALITY,                      162

  XXIII. A BATTLE IN THE NIGHT,                169

  XXIV. THE NEW WARFARE,                       179

  XXV. THE HERALDS OF DISASTER,                188

  XXVI. AN INTERLUDE,                          193

  XXVII. ON THE TRACK OF TREASON,              201

  XXVIII. A SKIRMISH IN THE CLOUDS,            208

  XXIX. AN EMBASSY FROM THE SKY,               216

  XXX. AT CLOSE QUARTERS,                      225

  XXXI. A RUSSIAN RAID,                        233

  XXXII. THE END OF THE CHASE,                 241

  XXXIII. THE BREAKING OF THE CHARM,           247

  XXXIV. THE PATH OF CONQUEST,                 251

  XXXV. FROM CHAOS TO ARCADIE,                 258

  XXXVI. LOVE AND DUTY,                        267

  XXXVII. THE CAPTURE OF A CONTINENT,          276

  XXXVIII. THE BEGINNING OF THE END,           289

  XXXIX. THE BATTLE OF DOVER,                  295

  XL. BELEAGUERED LONDON,                      301

  XLI. AN ENVOY OF DELIVERANCE,                308

  XLII. THE EVE OF ARMAGEDDON,                 315

  XLIII. THE OLD LION AT BAY,                  323

  XLIV. THE TURN OF THE BATTLE-TIDE,           331

  XLV. ARMAGEDDON,                             339

  XLVI. VICTORY,                               347

  XLVII. THE JUDGMENT OF NATAS,                355

  XLVIII. THE ORDERING OF EUROPE,              366

  XLIX. THE STORY OF THE MASTER,               375

  EPILOGUE.--"AND ON EARTH PEACE!"             386




THE ANGEL OF THE REVOLUTION.




CHAPTER I.

AT THE ELEVENTH HOUR.


"Victory! It flies! I am master of the Powers of the Air at last!"

They were strange words to be uttered, as they were, by a pale,
haggard, half-starved looking young fellow in a dingy, comfortless
room on the top floor of a South London tenement-house; and yet there
was a triumphant ring in his voice, and a clear, bright flush on his
thin cheeks that spoke at least for his own absolute belief in their
truth.

Let us see how far he was justified in that belief.

     *     *     *     *     *

To begin at the beginning, Richard Arnold was one of those men whom
the world is wont to call dreamers and enthusiasts before they
succeed, and heaven-born geniuses and benefactors of humanity
afterwards.

He was twenty-six, and for nearly six years past he had devoted
himself, soul and body, to a single idea--to the so far unsolved
problem of aërial navigation.

This idea had haunted him ever since he had been able to think
logically at all--first dimly at school, and then more clearly at
college, where he had carried everything before him in mathematics
and natural science, until it had at last become a ruling passion
that crowded everything else out of his life, and made him,
commercially speaking, that most useless of social units--a
one-idea'd man, whose idea could not be put into working form.

He was an orphan, with hardly a blood relation in the world. He had
started with plenty of friends, mostly made at college, who thought
he had a brilliant future before him, and therefore looked upon him
as a man whom it might be useful to know.

But as time went on, and no results came, these dropped off, and he
got to be looked upon as an amiable lunatic, who was wasting his
great talents and what money he had on impracticable fancies, when he
might have been earning a handsome income if he had stuck to the
beaten track, and gone in for practical work.

The distinctions that he had won at college, and the reputation he
had gained as a wonderfully clever chemist and mechanician, had led
to several offers of excellent positions in great engineering firms;
but to the surprise and disgust of his friends he had declined them
all. No one knew why, for he had kept his secret with the almost
passionate jealousy of the true enthusiast, and so his refusals were
put down to sheer foolishness, and he became numbered with the
geniuses who are failures because they are not practical.

When he came of age he had inherited a couple of thousand pounds,
which had been left in trust to him by his father. Had it not been
for that two thousand pounds he would have been forced to employ his
knowledge and his talents conventionally, and would probably have
made a fortune. But it was just enough to relieve him from the
necessity of earning his living for the time being, and to make it
possible for him to devote himself entirely to the realisation of his
life-dream--at any rate until the money was gone.

Of course he yielded to the temptation--nay, he never gave the other
course a moment's thought. Two thousand pounds would last him for
years; and no one could have persuaded him that with complete
leisure, freedom from all other concerns, and money for the necessary
experiments, he would not have succeeded long before his capital was
exhausted.

So he put the money into a bank whence he could draw it out as he
chose, and withdrew himself from the world to work out the ideal of
his life.

Year after year passed, and still success did not come. He found
practice very different from theory, and in a hundred details he met
with difficulties he had never seen on paper. Meanwhile his money
melted away in costly experiments which only raised hopes that ended
in bitter disappointment. His wonderful machine was a miracle of
ingenuity, and was mechanically perfect in every detail save one--it
would do no practical work.

Like every other inventor who had grappled with the problem, he had
found himself constantly faced with that fatal ratio of weight to
power. No engine that he could devise would do more than lift itself
and the machine. Again and again he had made a toy that would fly, as
others had done before him, but a machine that would navigate the air
as a steamer or an electric vessel navigated the waters, carrying
cargo and passengers, was still an impossibility while that terrible
problem of weight and power remained unsolved.

In order to eke out his money to the uttermost, he had clothed and
lodged himself meanly, and had denied himself everything but the
barest necessaries of life.

Thus he had prolonged the struggle for over five years of toil and
privation and hope deferred, and now, when his last sovereign had
been changed and nearly spent, success--real, tangible, practical
success--had come to him, and the discovery that was to be to the
twentieth century what the steam-engine had been to the nineteenth
was accomplished.

He had discovered the true motive power at last.

Two liquefied gases--which, when united, exploded spontaneously--were
admitted by a clockwork escapement in minute quantities into the
cylinders of his engine, and worked the pistons by the expansive
force of the gases generated by the explosion. There was no weight
but the engine itself and the cylinders containing the liquefied
gases. Furnaces, boilers, condensers, accumulators, dynamos--all the
ponderous apparatus of steam and electricity--were done away with,
and he had a power at command greater than either of them.

There was no doubt about it. The moment that his trembling fingers
set the escapement mechanism in motion, the model that embodied the
thought and labour of years rose into the air as gracefully as a bird
on the wing, and sailed round and round in obedience to its rudder,
straining hard at the string which prevented it from striking the
ceiling. It was weighted in strict proportion to the load that the
full-sized air-ship would have to carry. To increase this was merely
a matter of increasing the power of the engine and the size of the
floats and fans.

The room was a large one, for the house had been built for a better
fate than letting in tenements, and it ran from back to front with a
window at each end. Out of doors there was a strong breeze blowing,
and as soon as Arnold was sure that his ship was able to hold its own
in still air, he threw both the windows open and let the wind blow
straight through the room. Then he drew the air-ship down,
straightened the rudder, and set it against the breeze.

In almost agonised suspense he watched it rise from the floor, float
motionless for a moment, and then slowly forge ahead in the teeth of
the wind, gathering speed as it went. It was then that he had uttered
that triumphant cry of "Victory!" All the long years of privation and
hope deferred vanished in that one supreme moment of innocent and
bloodless conquest, and he saw himself master of a kingdom as wide as
the world itself.

He let the model fly the length of the room before he stopped the
clockwork and cut off the motive power, allowing it to sink gently to
the floor. Then came the reaction. He looked steadfastly at his
handiwork for several moments in silence, and then he turned and
threw himself on to a shabby little bed that stood in one corner of
the room and burst into a flood of tears.

Triumph had come, but had it not come too late? He knew the boundless
possibilities of his invention--but they had still to be realised. To
do this would cost thousands of pounds, and he had just one
half-crown and a few coppers. Even these were not really his own, for
he was already a week behind with his rent, and another payment fell
due the next day. That would be twelve shillings in all, and if it
was not paid he would be turned into the street.

As he raised himself from the bed he looked despairingly round the
bare, shabby room. No; there was nothing there that he could pawn or
sell. Everything saleable had gone already to keep up the struggle of
hope against despair. The bed and wash-stand, the plain deal table,
and the one chair that comprised the furniture of the room were not
his. A little carpenter's bench, a few worn tools and odds and ends
of scientific apparatus, and a dozen well-used books--these were all
that he possessed in the world now, save the clothes on his back, and
a plain painted sea-chest in which he was wont to lock up his
precious model when he had to go out.

His model! No, he could not sell that. At best it would fetch but the
price of an ingenious toy, and without the secret of the two gases it
was useless. But was not that worth something? Yes, if he did not
starve to death before he could persuade any one that there was money
in it. Besides, the chest and its priceless contents would be seized
for the rent next day, and then--

"God help me! What _am_ I to do?"

The words broke from him like a cry of physical pain, and ended in a
sob, and for all answer there was the silence of the room and the
inarticulate murmur of the streets below coming up through the open
windows.

He was weak with hunger and sick with excitement, for he had lived
for days on bread and cheese, and that day he had eaten nothing since
the crust that had served him for breakfast. His nerves, too, were
shattered by the intense strain of his final trial and triumph, and
his head was getting light.

With a desperate effort he recovered himself, and the heroic
resolution that had sustained him through his long struggle came to
his aid again. He got up and poured some water from the ewer into a
cracked cup and drank it. It refreshed him for the moment, and he
poured the rest of the water over his head. That steadied his nerves
and cleared his brain. He took up the model from the floor, laid it
tenderly and lovingly in its usual resting-place in the chest. Then
he locked the chest and sat down upon it to think the situation over.

Ten minutes later he rose to his feet and said aloud--

"It's no use. I can't think on an empty stomach. I'll go out and have
one more good meal if it's the last I ever have in the world, and
then perhaps some ideas will come."

So saying, he took down his hat, buttoned his shabby velveteen coat
to conceal his lack of a waistcoat, and went out, locking the door
behind him as he went.

Five minutes' walk brought him to the Blackfriars Road, and then he
turned towards the river and crossed the bridge just as the motley
stream of city workers was crossing it in the opposite direction on
their homeward journey.

At Ludgate Circus he went into an eating-house and fared sumptuously
on a plate of beef, some bread and butter, and a pint mug of coffee.
As he was eating a paper-boy came in and laid an _Echo_ on the table
at which he was sitting. He took it up mechanically, and ran his eye
carelessly over the columns. He was in no humour to be interested by
the tattle of an evening paper, but in a paragraph under the heading
of Foreign News a once familiar name caught his eye, and he read the
paragraph through. It ran as follows:--

      RAILWAY OUTRAGE IN RUSSIA.

    When the Berlin-Petersburg express stopped last night at Kovno,
    the first stop after passing the Russian frontier, a shocking
    discovery was made in the smoking compartment of the palace car
    which has been on the train for the last few months. Colonel
    Dornovitch, of the Imperial Police, who is understood to have
    been on his return journey from a secret mission to Paris, was
    found stabbed to the heart and quite dead. In the centre of the
    forehead were two short straight cuts in the form of a *T*
    reaching to the bone. Not long ago Colonel Dornovitch was
    instrumental in unearthing a formidable Nihilist conspiracy, in
    connection with which over fifty men and women of various social
    ranks were exiled for life to Siberia. The whole affair is
    wrapped in the deepest mystery, the only clue in the hands of the
    police being the fact that the cross cut on the forehead of the
    victim indicates that the crime is the work, not of the Nihilists
    proper, but of that unknown and mysterious society usually
    alluded to as the Terrorists, not one of whom has ever been seen
    save in his crimes. How the assassin managed to enter and leave
    the car unperceived while the train was going at full speed is an
    apparently insoluble riddle. Saving the victim and the
    attendants, the only passengers in the car who had not retired to
    rest were another officer in the Russian service and Lord
    Alanmere, who was travelling to St. Petersburg to resume, after
    leave of absence, the duties of the Secretaryship to the British
    Embassy, to which he was appointed some two years ago.

"Why, that must be the Lord Alanmere who was at Trinity in my time,
or rather Viscount Tremayne, as he was then," mused Arnold, as he
laid the paper down. "We were very good friends in those days. I
wonder if he'd know me now, and lend me a ten-pound note to get me
out of the infernal fix I'm in? I believe he would, for he was one of
the few really good-hearted men I have so far met with.

"If he were in London I really think I should take courage from my
desperation, and put my case before him and ask his help. However,
he's not in London, and so it's no use wishing. Well, I feel more of
a man for that shillingsworth of food and drink, and I'll go and wind
up my dissipation with a pipe and a quiet think on the Embankment."




CHAPTER II.

AT WAR WITH SOCIETY.


When Richard Arnold reached the Embankment dusk had deepened into
night, so far, at least, as nature was concerned. But in London in
the beginning of the twentieth century there was but little night to
speak of, save in the sense of a division of time. The date of the
paper which contained the account of the tragedy on the Russian
railway was September 3rd, 1903, and within the last ten years
enormous progress had been made in electric lighting.

The ebb and flow in the Thames had at last been turned to account,
and worked huge turbines which perpetually stored up electric power
that was used not only for lighting, but for cooking in hotels and
private houses, and for driving machinery. At all the great centres
of traffic huge electric suns cast their rays far and wide along the
streets, supplementing the light of the lesser lamps with which they
were lined on each side.

The Embankment from Westminster to Blackfriars was bathed in a flood
of soft white light from hundreds of great lamps running along both
sides, and from the centre of each bridge a million candle-power sun
cast rays upon the water that were continued in one unbroken stream
of light from Chelsea to the Tower.

On the north side of the river the scene was one of brilliant and
splendid opulence, that contrasted strongly with the half-lighted
gloom of the murky wilderness of South London, dark and forbidding in
its irredeemable ugliness.

From Blackfriars Arnold walked briskly towards Westminster, bitterly
contrasting as he went the lavish display of wealth around him with
the sordid and seemingly hopeless poverty of his own desperate
condition.

He was the maker and possessor of a far greater marvel than anything
that helped to make up this splendid scene, and yet the ragged tramps
who were remorselessly moved on from one seat to another by the
policemen as soon as they had settled themselves down for a rest and
a doze, were hardly poorer than he was.

For nearly four hours he paced backwards and forwards, every now and
then stopping to lean on the parapet, and once or twice to sit down,
until the chill autumn wind pierced his scanty clothing, and
compelled him to resume his walk in order to get warm again.

All the time he turned his miserable situation over and over again in
his mind without avail. There seemed no way out of it; no way of
obtaining the few pounds that would save him from homeless beggary
and his splendid invention from being lost to him and the world,
certainly for years, and perhaps for ever.

And then, as hour after hour went by, and still no cheering thought
came, the misery of the present pressed closer and closer upon him.
He dare not go home, for that would be to bring the inevitable
disaster of the morrow nearer, and, besides, it was home no longer
till the rent was paid. He had two shillings, and he owed at least
twelve. He was also the maker of a machine for which the Tsar of
Russia had made a standing offer of a million sterling. That million
might have been his if he had possessed the money necessary to bring
his invention under the notice of the great Autocrat.

That was the position he had turned over and over in his mind until
its horrible contradictions maddened him. With a little money, riches
and fame were his; without it he was a beggar in sight of starvation.

And yet he doubted whether, even in his present dire extremity, he
could, had he had the chance, sell what might be made the most
terrific engine of destruction ever thought of to the head and front
of a despotism that he looked upon as the worst earthly enemy of
mankind.

For the twentieth time he had paused in his weary walk to and fro to
lean on the parapet close by Cleopatra's Needle. The Embankment was
almost deserted now, save by the tramps and a few isolated wanderers
like himself. For several minutes he looked out over the brightly
glittering waters below him, wondering listlessly how long it would
take him to drown if he dropped over, and whether he would be rescued
before he was dead, and brought back to life, and prosecuted the next
day for daring to try and leave the world save in the conventional
and orthodox fashion.

Then his mind wandered back to the Tsar and his million, and he
pictured to himself the awful part that a fleet of air-ships such as
his would play in the general European war that people said could not
now be put off for many months longer. As he thought of this the
vision grew in distinctness, and he saw them hovering over armies and
cities and fortresses, and raining irresistible death and destruction
down upon them. The prospect appalled him, and he shuddered as he
thought that it was now really within the possibility of realisation;
and then his ideas began to translate themselves involuntarily into
words which he spoke aloud, completely oblivious for the time being
of his surroundings.

"No, I think I would rather destroy it, and then take my secret with
me out of the world, than put such an awful power of destruction and
slaughter into the hands of the Tsar, or, for the matter of that, any
other of the rulers of the earth. Their subjects can butcher each
other quite efficiently enough as it is. The next war will be the
most frightful carnival of destruction that the world has ever seen;
but what would it be like if I were to give one of the nations of
Europe the power of raining death and desolation on its enemies from
the skies! No, no! Such a power, if used at all, should only be used
against and not for the despotisms that afflict the earth with the
curse of war!"

"Then why not use it so, my friend, if you possess it, and would see
mankind freed from its tyrants?" said a quiet voice at his elbow.

The sound instantly scattered his vision to the winds, and he turned
round with a startled exclamation to see who had spoken. As he did
so, a whiff of smoke from a very good cigar drifted past his
nostrils, and the voice said again in the same quiet, even tones--

"You must forgive me for my bad manners in listening to what you were
saying, and also for breaking in upon your reverie. My excuse must be
the great interest that your words had for me. Your opinions would
appear to be exactly my own, too, and perhaps you will accept that as
another excuse for my rudeness."

It was the first really kindly, friendly voice that Richard Arnold
had heard for many a long day, and the words were so well chosen and
so politely uttered that it was impossible to feel any resentment, so
he simply said in answer--

"There was no rudeness, sir; and, besides, why should a gentleman
like you apologise for speaking to a"--

"Another gentleman," quickly interrupted his new acquaintance.
"Because I transgressed the laws of politeness in doing so, and an
apology was due. Your speech tells me that we are socially equals.
Intellectually you look my superior. The rest is a difference only of
money, and that any smart swindler can bury himself in nowadays if he
chooses. But come, if you have no objection to make my better
acquaintance, I have a great desire to make yours. If you will pardon
my saying so, you are evidently not an ordinary man, or else,
something tells me, you would be rich. Have a smoke and let us talk,
since we apparently have a subject in common. Which way are you
going?"

"Nowhere--and therefore anywhere," replied Arnold, with a laugh that
had but little merriment in it. "I have reached a point from which
all roads are one to me."

"That being the case I propose that you shall take the one that leads
to my chambers in Savoy Mansions yonder. We shall find a bit of
supper ready, I expect, and then I shall ask you to talk. Come
along!"

There was no more mistaking the genuine kindness and sincerity of the
invitation than the delicacy with which it was given. To have refused
would not only have been churlish, but it would have been for a
drowning man to knock aside a kindly hand held out to help him; so
Arnold accepted, and the two new strangely met and strangely assorted
friends walked away together in the direction of the Savoy.

The suite of rooms occupied by Arnold's new acquaintance was the beau
ideal of a wealthy bachelor's abode. Small, compact, cosy, and richly
furnished, yet in the best of taste withal, the rooms looked like an
indoor paradise to him after the bare squalor of the one room that
had been his own home for over two years.

His host took him first into a dainty little bath-room to wash his
hands, and by the time he had performed his scanty toilet supper was
already on the table in the sitting-room. Nothing melts reserve like
a good well-cooked meal washed down by appropriate liquids, and
before supper was half over Arnold and his host were chatting
together as easily as though they stood on perfectly equal terms and
had known each other for years. His new friend seemed purposely to
keep the conversation to general subjects until the meal was over and
his pattern man-servant had removed the cloth and left them together
with the wine and cigars on the table.

As soon as he had closed the door behind him his host motioned Arnold
to an easy-chair on one side of the fireplace, threw himself into
another on the other side, and said--

"Now, my friend, plant yourself, as they say across the water, help
yourself to what there is as the spirit moves you, and talk--the more
about yourself the better. But stop. I forgot that we do not even
know each other's name yet. Let me introduce myself first.

"My name is Maurice Colston; I am a bachelor, as you see. For the
rest, in practice I am an idler, a dilettante, and a good deal else
that is pleasant and utterly useless. In theory, let me tell you, I
am a Socialist, or something of the sort, with a lively conviction as
to the injustice and absurdity of the social and economic conditions
which enable me to have such a good time on earth without having done
anything to deserve it beyond having managed to be born the son of my
father."

He stopped and looked at his guest through the wreaths of his cigar
smoke as much as to say: "And now who are you?"

Arnold took the silent hint, and opened his mouth and his heart at
the same time. Quite apart from the good turn he had done him, there
was a genial frankness about his unconventional host that chimed in
so well with his own nature that he cast all reserve aside, and told
plainly and simply the story of his life and its master passion, his
dreams and hopes and failures, and his final triumph in the hour when
triumph itself was defeat.

His host heard him through without a word, but towards the end of his
story his face betrayed an interest, or rather an expectant anxiety,
to hear what was coming next that no mere friendly concern of the
moment for one less fortunate than himself could adequately account
for. At length, when Arnold had completed his story with a brief but
graphic description of the last successful trial of his model, he
leant forward in his chair, and, fixing his dark, steady eyes on his
guest's face, said in a voice from which every trace of his former
good-humoured levity had vanished--

"A strange story, and truer, I think, than the one I told you. Now
tell me on your honour as a gentleman: Were you really in earnest
when I heard you say on the embankment that you would rather smash up
your model and take the secret with you into the next world, than
sell your discovery to the Tsar for the million that he has offered
for such an air-ship as yours?"

"Absolutely in earnest," was the reply. "I have seen enough of the
seamy side of this much-boasted civilisation of ours to know that it
is the most awful mockery that man ever insulted his Maker with. It
is based on fraud, and sustained by force--force that ruthlessly
crushes all who do not bow the knee to Mammon. I am the enemy of a
society that does not permit a man to be honest and live, unless he
has money and can defy it. I have just two shillings in the world,
and I would rather throw them into the Thames and myself after them
than take that million from the Tsar in exchange for an engine of
destruction that would make him master of the world."

"Those are brave words," said Colston, with a smile. "Forgive me for
saying so, but I wonder whether you would repeat them if I told you
that I am a servant of his Majesty the Tsar, and that you shall have
that million for your model and your secret the moment that you
convince me that what you have told me is true."

Before he had finished speaking Arnold had risen to his feet. He
heard him out, and then he said, slowly and steadily--

"I should not take the trouble to repeat them; I should only tell you
that I am sorry that I have eaten salt with a man who could take
advantage of my poverty to insult me. Good night."

He was moving towards the door when Colston jumped up from his chair,
strode round the table, and got in front of him. Then he put his two
hands on his shoulders, and, looking straight into his eyes, said in
a tone that vibrated with emotion--

"Thank God, I have found an honest man at last! Go and sit down
again, my friend, my comrade, as I hope you soon will be. Forgive me
for the foolishness that I spoke! I am no servant of the Tsar. He and
all like him have no more devoted enemy on earth than I am. Look! I
will soon prove it to you."

As he said the last words, Colston let go Arnold's shoulders, flung
off his coat and waistcoat, slipped his braces off his shoulders, and
pulled his shirt up to his neck. Then he turned his bare back to his
guest, and said--

"That is the sign-manual of Russian tyranny--the mark of the knout!"

Arnold shrank back with a cry of horror at the sight. From waist to
neck Colston's back was a mass of hideous scars and wheals, crossing
each other and rising up into purple lumps, with livid blue and grey
spaces between them. As he stood, there was not an inch of
naturally-coloured skin to be seen. It was like the back of a man who
had been flayed alive, and then flogged with a cat-o'-nine-tails.

Before Arnold had overcome his horror his host had re-adjusted his
clothing. Then he turned to him and said--

"That was my reward for telling the governor of a petty Russian town
that he was a brute-beast for flogging a poor decrepit old Jewess to
death. Do you believe me now when I say that I am no servant or
friend of the Tsar?"

"Yes, I do," replied Arnold, holding out his hand, "you were right to
try me, and I was wrong to be so hasty. It is a failing of mine that
has done me plenty of harm before now. I think I know now what you
are without your telling me. Give me a piece of paper and you shall
have my address, so that you can come to-morrow and see the
model--only I warn you that you will have to pay my rent to keep my
landlord's hands off it. And then I must be off, for I see it's past
twelve."

"You are not going out again to-night, my friend, while I have a sofa
and plenty of rugs at your disposal," said his host. "You will sleep
here, and in the morning we will go together and see this marvel of
yours. Meanwhile sit down and make yourself at home with another
cigar. We have only just begun to know each other--we two enemies of
Society!"




CHAPTER III.

A FRIENDLY CHAT.


Soon after eight the next morning Colston came into the sitting-room
where Arnold had slept on the sofa, and dreamt dreams of war and
world-revolts and battles fought in mid-air between aërial navies
built on the plan of his own model. When Colston came in he was just
awake enough to be wondering whether the events of the previous night
were a reality or part of his dreams--a doubt that was speedily set
at rest by his host drawing back the curtains and pulling up the
blinds.

The moment his eyes were properly open he saw that he was anywhere
but in his own shabby room in Southwark, and the rest was made clear
by Colston saying--

"Well, comrade Arnold, Lord High Admiral of the Air, how have you
slept? I hope you found the sofa big and soft enough, and that the
last cigar has left no evil effects behind it."

"Eh? Oh, good morning! I don't know whether it was the whisky or the
cigars, or what it was; but do you know I have been dreaming all
sorts of absurd things about battles in the air and dropping
explosives on fortresses and turning them into small volcanoes. When
you came in just now I hadn't the remotest idea where I was. It's
time to get up, I suppose?"

"Yes, it's after eight a good bit. I've had my tub, so the bath-room
is at your service. Meanwhile, Burrows will be laying the table for
breakfast. When you have finished your tub, come into my
dressing-room, and let me rig you out. We are about of a size, and I
think I shall be able to meet your most fastidious taste. In fact, I
could rig you out as anything--from a tramp to an officer of the
Guards."

"It wouldn't take much change to accomplish the former, I'm afraid.
But, really, I couldn't think of trespassing so far on your
hospitality as to take your very clothes from you. I'm deep enough in
your debt already."

"Don't talk nonsense, Richard Arnold. The tone in which those last
words were said shows me that you have not duly laid to heart what I
said last night. There is no such thing as private property in the
Brotherhood, of which I hope, by this time to-morrow, you will be an
initiate.

"What I have here is mine only for the purposes of the Cause,
wherefore it is as much yours as mine, for to-day we are going on the
Brotherhood's business. Why, then, should you have any scruples about
wearing the Brotherhood's clothes? Now clear out and get tubbed, and
wash some of those absurd ideas out of your head."

"Well, as you put it that way, I don't mind, only remember that I
don't necessarily put on the principles of the Brotherhood with its
clothes."

So saying, Arnold got up from the sofa, stretched himself, and went
off to make his toilet.

When he sat down to breakfast with his host half an hour later, very
few who had seen him on the Embankment the night before would have
recognised him as the same man. The tailor, after all, does a good
deal to make the man, externally at least, and the change of clothes
in Arnold's case had transformed him from a superior looking tramp
into an aristocratic and decidedly good-looking man, in the prime of
his youth, saving only for the thinness and pallor of his face, and a
perceptible stoop in the shoulders.

During breakfast they chatted about their plans for the day, and then
drifted into generalities, chiefly of a political nature.

The better Arnold came to know Maurice Colston the more remarkable
his character appeared to him; and it was his growing wonder at the
contradictions that it exhibited that made him say towards the end of
the meal--

"I must say you're a queer sort of conspirator, Colston. My idea of
Nihilists and members of revolutionary societies has always taken the
form of silent, stealthy, cautious beings, with a lively distrust and
hatred of the whole human race outside their own circles. And yet
here are you, an active member of the most terrible secret society in
existence, pledged to the destruction of nearly every institution on
earth, and carrying your life in your hand, opening your heart like a
schoolboy to a man you have literally not known for twenty-four
hours.

"Suppose you had made a mistake in me. What would there be to prevent
me telling the police who you are, and having you locked up with a
view to extradition to Russia?"

"In the first place," replied Colston quietly, "you would not do so,
because I am not mistaken in you, and because, in your heart, whether
you fully know it or not, you believe as I do about the destruction
that is about to fall upon Society.

"In the second place, if you did betray my confidence, I should be
able to bring such an overwhelming array of the most respectable
evidence to show that I was nothing like what I really am, that you
would be laughed at for a madman; and, in the third place, there
would be an inquest on you within twenty-four hours after you had
told your story. Do you remember the death of Inspector Ainsworth, of
the Criminal Investigation Department, about six months ago?"

"Yes, of course I do. Hermit and all as I was, I could hardly help
hearing about that, considering what a noise it made. But I thought
that was cleared up. Didn't one of that gang of garotters that was
broken up in South London a couple of months later confess to
strangling him in the statement that he made before he was executed?"

"Yes, and his widow is now getting ten shillings a week for life on
account of that confession. Birkett no more killed Ainsworth than you
did; but he had killed two or three others, and so the confession
didn't do him very much harm.

"No; Ainsworth met his death in quite another way. He accepted from
the Russian secret police bureau in London a bribe of £250 down and
the promise of another £250 if he succeeded in manufacturing enough
evidence against a member of our Outer Circle to get him extradited
to Russia on a trumped-up charge of murder.

"The Inner Circle learnt of this from one of our spies in the Russian
London police, and----, well, Ainsworth was found dead with the mark
of the Terror upon his forehead before he had time to put his
treachery into action. He was executed by two of the Brotherhood, who
are members of the Metropolitan police force, and who were afterwards
complimented by the magistrate for the intelligent efforts they had
made in bringing the murderers to justice."

Colston told the dark story in the most careless of tones between the
puffs of his after-breakfast cigarette. Arnold stifled his horror as
well as he was able, but he could not help saying, when his host had
done--

"This Brotherhood of yours is well named the Terror; but was not that
rather a murder than an execution?"

"By no means," replied Colston, a trifle coldly. "Society hangs or
beheads a man who kills another. Ainsworth knew as well as we did
that if the man he tried to betray by false evidence had once set
foot in Russia, the torments of a hundred deaths would have been his
before he had been allowed to die.

"He betrayed his office and his faith to his English masters in order
to commit this vile crime, and so he was killed as a murderous and
treacherous reptile that was not fit to live. We of the Terror are
not lawyers, and so we make no distinctions between deliberate
plotting for money to kill and the act of killing itself. Our law is
closer akin to justice than the hair-splitting fraud that is
tolerated by Society."

Either from emotional or logical reasons Arnold made no reply to this
reasoning, and, seeing he remained silent, Colston resumed his
ordinary nonchalant, good-humoured tone, and went on--

"But come, that will be horrors enough for to-day. We have other
business in hand, and we may as well get to it at once. About this
wonderful invention of yours. Of course I believe all you have told
me about it, but you must remember that I am only an agent, and that
I am inexorably bound by certain rules, in accordance with which I
must act.

"Now, to be perfectly plain with you, and in order that we may
thoroughly understand each other before either of us commits himself
to anything, I must tell you that I want to see this model flying
ship of yours in order to be able to report on it to-night to the
Executive of the Inner Circle, to whom I shall also want to introduce
you. If you will not allow me to do that say so at once, and, for the
present at least, our negotiations must come to a sudden stop."

"Go on," said Arnold quietly; "so far I consent. For the rest I would
rather hear you to the end."

"Very well. Then if the Executive approve of the invention, you will
be asked to join the Inner Circle at once, and to devote yourself
body and soul to the Society and the accomplishment of the objects
that will be explained to you. If you refuse there will be an end of
the matter, and you will simply be asked to give your word of honour
to reveal nothing that you have seen or heard, and then allowed to
depart in peace.

"If, on the other hand, you consent, in consideration of the immense
importance of your secret--which there is no need to disguise from
you--to the Brotherhood, the usual condition of passing through the
Outer Circle will be dispensed with, and you will be trusted as
absolutely as we shall expect you to trust us.

"Whatever funds you then require to manufacture an air-ship on the
plan of your model will be placed at your disposal, and a suitable
place will be selected for the works that you will have to build.
When the ship is ready to take the air you will, of course, be
appointed to the command of her, and you will pick your crew from
among the workmen who will act under your orders in the building of
the vessel.

"They will all be members of the Outer Circle, who will not
understand your orders, but simply obey them blindly, even to the
death. One member of the Inner Circle will act as your second in
command, and he will be as perfectly trusted as you will be, so that
in unforeseen emergencies you will be able to consult with him with
perfect confidence. Now I think I have told you all. What do you
say?"

Arnold was silent for a few minutes, too busy for speech with the
rush of thoughts that had crowded through his brain as Colston was
speaking. Then he looked up at his host and said--

"May I make conditions?"

"You may state them," replied he, with a smile, "but, of course, I
don't undertake to accept them without consultation with my--I mean
with the Executive."

"Of course not," said Arnold. "Well, the conditions that I should
feel myself obliged to make with your Executive would be, briefly
speaking, these: I would not reveal to any one the composition of the
gases from which I derive my motive force. I should manufacture them
myself in given quantities, and keep them always under my own charge.

"At the first attempt to break faith with me in this respect I would
blow the air-ship and all her crew, including myself, into such
fragments as it would be difficult to find one of them. I have and
wish for no life apart from my invention, and I would not survive
it."

"Good!" interrupted Colston. "There spoke the true enthusiast. Go
on."

"Secondly, I would use the machine only in open warfare--when the
Brotherhood is fighting openly for the attainment of a definite end.
Once the appeal to force has been made I will employ a force such as
no nation on earth can use without me, and I will use it as
unsparingly as the armies and fleets engaged will employ their own
engines of destruction on one another. But I will be no party to the
destruction of defenceless towns and people who are not in arms
against us. If I am ordered to do that I tell you candidly that I
will not do it. I will blow the air-ship itself up first."

"The conditions are somewhat stringent, although the sentiments are
excellent," replied Colston; "still, of myself I can neither accept
nor reject them. That will be for the Executive to do. For my own
part I think that you will be able to arrive at a basis of agreement
on them. And now I think we have said all we can say for the present,
and so if you are ready we'll be off and satisfy my longing to see
the invention that is to make us the arbiters of war--when war comes,
which I fancy will not be long now."

Something in the tone in which these last words were spoken struck
Arnold with a kind of cold chill, and he shivered slightly as he said
in answer to Colston--

"I am ready when you are, and no less anxious than you to set eyes on
my model. I hope to goodness it is all safe! Do you know, when I am
away from it I feel just like a woman away from her first baby."

A few minutes later two of the most dangerous enemies of Society
alive were walking quietly along the Embankment towards Blackfriars,
smoking their cigars and chatting as conventionally as though there
were no such things on earth as tyranny and oppression, and their
necessarily ever-present enemies conspiracy and brooding revolution.




CHAPTER IV.

THE HOUSE ON CLAPHAM COMMON.


Twenty minutes' walk took Arnold and Colston to the door of the
tenement-house in which the former had lived since his fast-dwindling
store of money had convinced him of the necessity of bringing his
expenses down to the lowest possible limit if he wished to keep up
the struggle with fate very much longer.

As they mounted the dirty, evil-smelling staircase, Colston said--

"Phew! Verily you are a hero of science if you have brought yourself
to live in a hole like this for a couple of years rather than give up
your dream, and grow fat on the loaves and fishes of
conventionality."

"This is a palace compared with some of the rookeries about here,"
replied Arnold, with a laugh. "The march of progress seems to have
left this half of London behind as hopeless. Ten years ago there were
a good many thousands of highly respectable mediocrities living on
this side of the river, but now I am told that the glory has departed
from the very best of its localities, and given them up to various
degrees of squalor. Vice, poverty, and misery seem to gravitate
naturally southward in London. I don't know why, but they do. Well,
here is the door of my humble den."

As he spoke he put the key in the lock, and opened the door, bidding
his companion enter as he did so.

Arnold's anxiety was soon relieved by finding the precious model
untouched in its resting-place, and it was at once brought out.
Colston was delighted beyond his powers of expression with the
marvellous ingenuity with which the miracle of mechanical skill was
contrived and put together; and when Arnold, after showing and
explaining to him all the various parts of the mechanism and the
external structure, at length set the engine working, and the
air-ship rose gracefully from the floor and began to sail round the
room in the wide circle to which it was confined by its mooring-line,
he stared at it for several minutes in wondering silence, following
it round and round with his eyes, and then he said in a voice from
which he vainly strove to banish the signs of the emotion that
possessed him--

"It is the last miracle of science! With a few such ships as that one
could conquer the world in a month!"

"Yes, that would not be a very difficult task, seeing that neither an
army nor a fleet could exist for twelve hours with two or three of
them hovering above it," replied Arnold.

The trial over, Arnold set to work and took the model partly to
pieces for packing up; and while he was putting it away in the old
sea-chest, Colston counted out ten sovereigns and laid them on the
table. Hearing the clink of the gold, Arnold looked up and said--

"What is that for? A sovereign will be quite enough to get me out of
my present scrape, and then if we come to any terms to-night it will
be time enough to talk about payment."

"The Brotherhood does not do business in that way," was the reply.
"At present your only connection with it is a commercial one, and ten
pounds is a very moderate fee for the privilege of inspecting such an
invention as this. Anyhow, that is what I am ordered to hand over to
you in payment for your trouble now and to-night, so you must accept
it as it is given--as a matter of business."

"Very well," said Arnold, closing and locking the chest as he spoke,
"if you think it worth ten pounds, the money will not come amiss to
me. Now, if you will remain and guard the household gods for a
minute, I will go and pay my rent and get a cab."

Half an hour later his few but priceless possessions were loaded on a
four-wheeler and Arnold had bidden farewell for ever to the dingy
room in which he had passed so many hours of toil and dreaming,
suffering and disappointment. Before lunch time they were safely
bestowed in a couple of rooms which Colston had engaged for him in
the same building in which his own rooms were.

In the afternoon, among other purchases, a more convenient case was
bought for the model, and in this it was packed with the plans and
papers which explained its construction, ready for the evening
journey.

The two friends dined together at six in Colston's rooms, and at
seven sharp his servant announced that the cab was at the door.
Within ten minutes they were bowling along the Embankment towards
Westminster Bridge in a luxuriously appointed hansom of the newest
type, with the precious case lying across their knees.

"This is a comfortable cab," said Arnold, when they had gone a
hundred yards or so. "By the way, how does the man know where to go?
I didn't hear you give him any directions."

"None were necessary," was the reply. "This cab, like a good many
others in London, belongs to the Brotherhood, and the man who is
driving is one of the Outer Circle. Our Jehus are the most useful
spies that we have. Many is the secret of the enemy that we have
learnt from, and many is the secret police agent who has been driven
to his rendezvous by a Terrorist who has heard every word that has
been spoken on the journey."

"How on earth is that managed?"

"Every one of the cabs is fitted with a telephonic arrangement
communicating with the roof. The driver has only to button the wire
of the transmitter up inside his coat so that the transmitter itself
lies near to his ear, and he can hear even a whisper inside the cab.

"The man who is driving us, for instance, has a sort of retainer from
the Russian Embassy to be on hand at certain hours on certain nights
in the week. Our cabs are all better horsed, better appointed, and
better driven than any others in London, and, consequently, they are
favourites, especially among the young attachés, and are nearly
always employed by them on their secret missions or love affairs,
which, by the way, are very often the same thing. Our own Jehu has a
job on to-night, from which we expect some results that will mystify
the enemy not a little. We got our first suspicions of Ainsworth from
a few incautious words that he spoke in one of our cabs."

"It's a splendid system, I should think, for discovering the
movements of your enemies," said Arnold, not without an uncomfortable
reflection on the fact that he was himself now completely in the
power of this terrible organisation, which had keen eyes and ready
hands in every capital of the civilised world. "But how do you guard
against treachery? It is well known that all the Governments of
Europe are spending money like water to unearth this mystery of the
Terror. Surely all your men cannot be incorruptible."

"Practically they are so. The very mystery which enshrouds all our
actions makes them so. We have had a few traitors, of course; but as
none of them has ever survived his treachery by twenty-four hours, a
bribe has lost its attraction for the rest."

In such conversation as this the time was passed, while the cab
crossed the river and made its way rapidly and easily along
Kennington Road and Clapham Road to Clapham Common. At length it
turned into the drive of one of those solid abodes of pretentious
respectability which front the Common, and pulled up before a big
stucco portico.

"Here we are!" exclaimed Colston, as the doors of the cab
automatically opened. He got out first, and Arnold handed the case to
him, and then followed him.

Without a word the driver turned his horse into the road again and
drove off towards town, and as they ascended the steps the front door
opened, and they went in, Colston saying as they did so--

"Is Mr. Smith at home?"

"Yes, sir; you are expected, I believe. Will you step into the
drawing-room?" replied the clean-shaven and immaculately respectable
man-servant, in evening dress, who had opened the door for them.

They were shown into a handsomely furnished room lit with electric
light. As soon as the footman had closed the door behind him, Colston
said--

"Well, now, here you are in the conspirators' den, in the very
headquarters of those Terrorists for whom Europe is being ransacked
constantly without the slightest success. I have often wondered what
the rigid respectability of Clapham Common would think if it knew the
true character of this harmless-looking house. I hardly think an
earthquake in Clapham Road would produce much more sensation than
such a discovery would.

"And now," he continued, his tone becoming suddenly much more
serious, "in a few minutes you will be in the presence of the Inner
Circle of the Terrorists, that is to say, of those who practically
hold the fate of Europe in their hands. You know pretty clearly what
they want with you. If you have thought better of the business that
we have discussed you are still at perfect liberty to retire from it,
on giving your word of honour not to disclose anything that I have
said to you."

"I have not the slightest intention of doing anything of the sort,"
replied Arnold. "You know the conditions on which I came here. I
shall put them before your Council, and if they are accepted your
Brotherhood will, within their limits, have no more faithful adherent
than I. If not, the business will simply come to an end as far as I
am concerned, and your secret will be as safe with me as though I had
taken the oath of membership."

"Well said!" replied Colston, "and just what I expected you to say.
Now listen to me for a minute. Whatever you may see or hear for the
next few minutes say nothing till you are asked to speak. I will say
all that is necessary at first. Ask no questions, but trust to
anything that may seem strange being explained in due course--as it
will be. A single indiscretion on your part might raise suspicions
which would be as dangerous as they would be unfounded. When you are
asked to speak do so without the slightest fear, and speak your mind
as openly as you have done to me."

"You need have no fear for me," replied Arnold. "I think I am
sensible enough to be prudent, and I am quite sure that I am
desperate enough to be fearless. Little worse can happen to me than
the fate that I was contemplating last night."

As he ceased speaking there was a knock at the door. It opened and
the footman reappeared, saying in the most commonplace fashion--

"Mr. Smith will be happy to see you now, gentlemen. Will you kindly
walk this way?"

They followed him out into the hall, and then, somewhat to Arnold's
surprise, down the stairs at the back, which apparently led to the
basement of the house.

The footman preceded them to the basement floor and halted before a
door in a little passage that looked like the entrance to a coal
cellar. On this he knocked in peculiar fashion with the knuckles of
one hand, while with the other he pressed the button of an electric
bell concealed under the paper on the wall. The bell sounded faintly
as though some distance off, and as it rang the footman said abruptly
to Colston--

"Das Wort ist Freiheit."

Arnold knew German enough to know that this meant "The word is
'Freedom,'" but why it should have been spoken in a foreign language
mystified him not a little.

While he was thinking about this the door opened, as if by a released
spring, and he saw before him a long, narrow passage, lit by four
electric arcs, and closed at the other end by a door, guarded by a
sentry armed with a magazine rifle.

He followed Colston down the passage, and when within a dozen feet of
the sentry, he brought his rifle to the "ready," and the following
strange dialogue ensued between him and Colston--

"Quien va?"

"Zwei Freunde der Bruderschaft."

"Por la libertad?"

"Für Freiheit über alles!"

"Pass, friends."

The rifle grounded as the words were spoken, and the sentry stepped
back to the wall of the passage.

At the same moment another bell rang beyond the door, and then the
door itself opened as the other had done.

They passed through, and it closed instantly behind them, leaving
them in total darkness.

Colston caught Arnold by the arm, and drew him towards him, saying as
he did so--

"What do you think of our system of passwords?"

"Pretty hard to get through unless one knew them, I should think. Why
the different languages?"

"To make assurance doubly sure every member of the Inner Circle must
be conversant with four European languages. On these the changes are
rung, and even I did not know what the two languages were to be
to-night before I entered the house, and if I had asked for 'Mr.
Brown' instead of 'Mr. Smith,' we should never have got beyond the
drawing-room.

"When the footman told me in German that the word was 'Freedom,' I
knew that I should have to answer the challenge of the sentry in
German. I did not know that he would challenge in Spanish, and if I
had not understood him, or had replied in any other language but
German, he would have shot us both down without saying another word,
and no one would ever have known what had become of us. You will be
exempt from this condition, because you will always come with me. I
am, in fact, responsible for you."

"H'm, there doesn't seem much chance of any one getting through on
false pretences," replied Arnold, with an irrepressible shudder. "Has
any one ever tried?"

"Yes, once. The two gentlemen whose disappearance made the famous
'Clapham Mystery' of about twelve months ago. They were two of the
smartest detectives in the French service, and the only two men who
ever guessed the true nature of this house. They are buried under the
floor on which you are standing at this moment."

The words were spoken with a cruel inflexible coldness, which struck
Arnold like a blast of frozen air. He shivered, and was about to
reply when Colston caught him by the arm again, and said hurriedly--

"H'st! We are going in. Remember what I said, and don't speak again
till some one asks you to do so."

As he spoke a door opened in the wall of the dark chamber in which
they had been standing for the last few minutes, and a flood of soft
light flowed in upon their dazzled eyes. At the same moment a man's
voice said from the room beyond in Russian--

"Who stands there?"

"Maurice Colston and the Master of the Air," replied Colston in the
same language.

"You are welcome," was the reply, and then Colston, taking Arnold by
the arm, led him into the room.




CHAPTER V.

THE INNER CIRCLE.


As soon as Arnold's eyes got accustomed to the light, he saw that he
was in a large, lofty room with panelled walls adorned with a number
of fine paintings. As he looked at these his gaze was fascinated by
them, even more than by the strange company which was assembled round
the long table that occupied the middle of the room.

Though they were all manifestly the products of the highest form of
art, their subjects were dreary and repulsive beyond description.
There was a horrible realism about them which reminded him
irresistibly of the awful collection of pictorial horrors in the
Musée Wiertz, in Brussels--those works of the brilliant but unhappy
genius who was driven into insanity by the sheer exuberance of his
own morbid imagination.

Here was a long line of men and women in chains staggering across a
wilderness of snow that melted away into the horizon without a break.
Beside them rode Cossacks armed with long whips that they used on men
and women alike when their fainting limbs gave way beneath them, and
they were like to fall by the wayside to seek the welcome rest that
only death could give them.

There was a picture of a woman naked to the waist, and tied up to a
triangle in a prison yard, being flogged by a soldier with willow
wands, while a group of officers stood by, apparently greatly
interested in the performance. Another painting showed a poor wretch
being knouted to death in the market-place of a Russian town, and yet
another showed a young and beautiful woman in a prison cell with her
face distorted by the horrible leer of madness, and her little white
hands clawing nervously at her long dishevelled hair.

Arnold stood for several minutes fascinated by the hideous realism of
the pictures, and burning with rage and shame at the thought that
they were all too terribly true to life, when he was startled out of
his reverie by the same voice that had called them from the dark room
saying to him in English--

"Well, Richard Arnold, what do you think of our little picture
gallery? The paintings are good in themselves, but it may make them
more interesting to you if you know that they are all faithful
reproductions of scenes that have really taken place within the
limits of the so-called civilised and Christian world. There are some
here in this room now who have suffered the torments depicted on
those canvases, and who could tell of worse horrors than even they
portray. We should like to know what you think of our paintings?"

Arnold glanced towards the table in search of Colston, but he had
vanished. Around the long table sat fourteen masked and shrouded
forms that were absolutely indistinguishable one from the other. He
could not even tell whether they were men or women, so closely were
their forms and faces concealed. Seeing that he was left to his own
discretion, he laid the case containing the model, which he had so
far kept under his arm, down on the floor, and, facing the strange
assembly, said as steadily as he could--

"My own reading tells me that they are only too true to the dreadful
reality. I think that the civilised and Christian Society which
permits such crimes to be committed against humanity, when it has the
power to stop them by force of arms, is neither truly civilised nor
truly Christian."

"And would _you_ stop them if you could?"

"Yes, if it cost the lives of millions to do it! They would be better
spent than the thirty million lives that were lost last century over
a few bits of territory."

"That is true, and augurs well for our future agreement. Be kind
enough to come to the table and take a seat."

The masked man who spoke was sitting in the chair at the foot of the
table, and as he said this one of those sitting at the side got up
and motioned to Arnold to take his place. As soon as he had done so
the speaker continued--

"We are glad to see that your sentiments are so far in accord with
our own, for that fact will make our negotiations all the easier.

"As you are aware, you are now in the Inner Circle of the Terrorists.
Yonder empty chair at the head of the table is that of our Chief,
who, though not with us in person, is ever present as a guiding
influence in our councils. We act as he directs, and it was from him
that we received news of you and your marvellous invention. It is
also by his direction that you have been invited here to-night with
an object that you are already aware of.

"I see from your face that you are about to ask how this can be,
seeing that you have never confided your secret to any one until last
night. It will be useless to ask me, for I myself do not know. We who
sit here simply execute the Master's will. We ask no questions, and
therefore we can answer none concerning him."

"I have none to ask," said Arnold, seeing that the speaker paused as
though expecting him to say something. "I came at the invitation of
one of your Brotherhood to lay certain terms before you, for you to
accept or reject as seems good to you. How you got to know of me and
my invention is, after all, a matter of indifference to me. With your
perfect system of espionage you might well find out more secret
things than that."

"Quite so," was the reply. "And the question that we have to settle
with you is how far you will consent to assist the work of the
Brotherhood with this invention of yours, and on what conditions you
will do so."

"I must first know as exactly as possible what the work of the
Brotherhood is."

"Under the circumstances there is no objection to your knowing that.
In the first place, that which is known to the outside world as the
Terror is an international secret society underlying and directing
the operations of the various bodies known as Nihilists, Anarchists,
Socialists--in fact, all those organisations which have for their
object the reform or destruction, by peaceful or violent means, of
Society as it is at present constituted.

"Its influence reaches beyond these into the various trade unions and
political clubs, the moving spirits of which are all members of our
Outer Circle. On the other side of Society we have agents and
adherents in all the Courts of Europe, all the diplomatic bodies, and
all the parliamentary assemblies throughout the world.

"We believe that Society as at present constituted is hopeless for
any good thing. All kinds of nameless brutalities are practised
without reproof in the names of law and order, and commercial
economics. On one side human life is a splendid fabric of cloth of
gold embroidered with priceless gems, and on the other it is a mass
of filthy, festering rags, swarming with vermin.

"We think that such a Society--a Society which permits considerably
more than the half of humanity to be sunk in poverty and misery while
a very small portion of it fools away its life in perfectly
ridiculous luxury--does not deserve to exist, and ought to be
destroyed.

"We also know that sooner or later it will destroy itself, as every
similar Society has done before it. For nearly forty years there has
now been almost perfect peace in Europe. At the same time, over
twenty millions of men are standing ready to take the field in a
week.

"War--universal war that will shake the world to its foundations--is
only a matter of a little more delay and a few diplomatic hitches.
Russia and England are within rifleshot of each other in Afghanistan,
and France and Germany are flinging defiances at each other across
the Rhine.

"Some one must soon fire the shot that will set the world in a blaze,
and meanwhile the toilers of the earth are weary of these dreadful
military and naval burdens, and would care very little if the
inevitable happened to-morrow.

"It is in the power of the Terrorists to delay or precipitate that
war to a certain extent. Hitherto all our efforts have been devoted
to the preservation of peace, and many of the so-called outrages
which have taken place in different parts of Europe, and especially
in Russia, during the last few years, have been accomplished simply
for the purpose of forcing the attention of the administrations to
internal affairs for the time, and so putting off what would have led
to a declaration of war.

"This policy has not been dictated by any hope of avoiding war
altogether, for that would have been sheer insanity. We have simply
delayed war as long as possible, because we have not felt that we
have been strong enough to turn the tide of battle at the right
moment in favour of the oppressed ones of the earth and against their
oppressors.

"But this invention of yours puts a completely different aspect on
the European situation. Armed with such a tremendous engine of
destruction as a navigable air-ship must necessarily be, when used in
conjunction with the explosives already at our disposal, we could
make war impossible to our enemies by bringing into the field a force
with which no army or fleet could contend without the certainty of
destruction. By these means we should ultimately compel peace and
enforce a general disarmament on land and sea.

"The vast majority of those who make the wealth of the world are sick
of seeing that wealth wasted in the destruction of human life, and
the ruin of peaceful industries. As soon, therefore, as we are in a
position to dictate terms under such tremendous penalties, all the
innumerable organisations with which we are in touch all over the
world will rise in arms and enforce them at all costs.

"Of course, it goes without saying that the powers that are now
enthroned in the high places of the world will fight bitterly and
desperately to retain the rule that they have held for so long, but
in the end we shall be victorious, and then on the ruins of this
civilisation a new and a better shall arise.

"That is a rough, brief outline of the policy of the Brotherhood,
which we are going to ask you to-night to join. Of course, in the
eyes of the world we are only a set of fiends, whose sole object is
the destruction of Society, and the inauguration of a state of
universal anarchy. That, however, has no concern for us. What is
called popular opinion is merely manufactured by the Press according
to order, and does not count in serious concerns. What I have
described to you are the true objects of the Brotherhood; and now it
remains for you to say, yes or no, whether you will devote yourself
and your invention to carrying them out or not."

For two or three minutes after the masked spokesman of the Inner
Circle had ceased speaking, there was absolute silence in the room.
The calmly spoken words which deliberately sketched out the ruin of a
civilisation and the establishment of a new order of things made a
deep impression on Arnold's mind. He saw clearly that he was standing
at the parting of the ways, and facing the most tremendous crisis
that could occur in the life of a human being.

It was only natural that he should look back, as he did, to the life
from which a single step would now part him for ever, without the
possibility of going back. He knew that if he once put his hands to
the plough, and looked back, death, swift and inevitable, would be
the penalty of his wavering. This, however, he had already weighed
and decided.

Most of what he had heard had found an echo in his own convictions.
Moreover, the life that he had left had no charms for him, while to
be one of the chief factors in a world-revolution was a destiny
worthy both of himself and his invention. So the fatal resolution was
taken, and he spoke the words that bound him for ever to the
Brotherhood.

"As I have already told Mr. Colston," he began by saying, "I will
join and faithfully serve the Brotherhood if the conditions that I
feel compelled to make are granted"--

"We know them already," interrupted the spokesman, "and they are
freely granted. Indeed, you can hardly fail to see that we are
trusting you to a far greater extent than it is possible for us to
make you trust us, unless you choose to do so. The air-ship once
built and afloat under your command, the game of war would to a great
extent be in your own hands. True, you would not survive treachery
very long; but, on the other hand, if it became necessary to kill
you, the air-ship would be useless, that is, if you took your secret
of the motive power with you into the next world."

"As I undoubtedly should," added Arnold quietly.

"We have no doubt that you would," was the equally quiet rejoinder.
"And now I will read to you the oath of membership that you will be
required to sign. Even when you have heard it, if you feel any
hesitation in subscribing to it, there will still be time to
withdraw, for we tolerate no unwilling or half-hearted recruits."

Arnold bowed his acquiescence, and the spokesman took a piece of
paper from the table and read aloud--

"_I, Richard Arnold, sign this paper in the full knowledge that in
doing so I devote myself absolutely for the rest of my life to the
service of the Brotherhood of Freedom, known to the world as the
Terrorists. As long as I live its ends shall be my ends, and no human
considerations shall weigh with me where those ends are concerned. I
will take life without mercy, and yield my own without hesitation at
its bidding. I will break all other laws to obey those which it
obeys, and if I disobey these I shall expect death as the just
penalty of my perjury._"

As he finished reading the oath, he handed the paper to Arnold,
saying as he did so--

"There are no theatrical formalities to be gone through. Simply sign
the paper and give it back to me, or else tear it up and go in
peace."

Arnold read it through slowly, and then glanced round the table. He
saw the eyes of the silent figures sitting about him shining at him
through the holes in their masks. He laid the paper down on the table
in front of him, dipped a pen in an inkstand that stood near, and
signed the oath in a firm, unfaltering hand. Then--committed for
ever, for good or evil, to the new life that he had adopted--he gave
the paper back again.

The President took it and read it, and then passed it to the mask on
his right hand. It went from one to the other round the table, each
one reading it before passing it on, until it got back to the
President. When it reached him he rose from his seat, and, going to
the fireplace, dropped it into the flames, and watched it until it
was consumed to ashes. Then, crossing the room to where Arnold was
sitting, he removed his mask with one hand, and held the other out to
him in greeting, saying as he did so--

"Welcome to the Brotherhood! Thrice welcome! for your coming has
brought the day of redemption nearer!"




CHAPTER VI.

NEW FRIENDS.


As Arnold returned the greeting of the President, all the other
members of the Circle rose from their seats and took off their masks
and the black shapeless cloaks which had so far completely covered
them from head to foot.

Then, one after the other, they came forward and were formally
introduced to him by the President. Nine of the fourteen were men,
and five were women of ages varying from middle age almost to
girlhood. The men were apparently all between twenty-five and
thirty-five, and included some half-dozen nationalities among them.

All, both men and women, evidently belonged to the educated, or
rather to the cultured class. Their speech, which seemed to change
with perfect ease from one language to another in the course of their
somewhat polyglot converse, was the easy flowing speech of men and
women accustomed to the best society, not only in the social but the
intellectual sense of the word.

All were keen, alert, and swift of thought, and on the face of each
one there was the dignifying expression of a deep and settled purpose
which at once differentiated them in Arnold's eyes from the ordinary
idle or merely money-making citizens of the world.

As each one came and shook hands with the new member of the
Brotherhood, he or she had some pleasant word of welcome and greeting
for him; and so well were the words chosen, and so manifestly
sincerely were they spoken, that by the time he had shaken hands all
round Arnold felt as much at home among them as though he were in the
midst of a circle of old friends.

Among the women there were two who had attracted his attention and
roused his interest far more than any of the other members of the
Circle. One of these was a tall and beautifully-shaped woman, whose
face and figure were those of a woman in the early twenties, but
whose long, thick hair was as white as though the snows of seventy
winters had drifted over it. As he returned her warm, firm
hand-clasp, and looked upon her dark, resolute, and yet perfectly
womanly features, the young engineer gave a slight start of
recognition. She noticed this at once and said, with a smile and a
quick flash from her splendid grey eyes--

"Ah! I see you recognise me. No, I am not ashamed of my portrait. I
am proud of the wounds that I have received in the war with tyranny,
so you need not fear to confess your recognition."

It was true that Arnold had recognised her. She was the original of
the central figure of the painting which depicted the woman being
flogged by the Russian soldiers.

Arnold flushed hotly at the words with the sudden passionate anger
that they roused within him, and replied in a low, steady voice--

"Those who would sanction such a crime as that are not fit to live. I
will not leave one stone of that prison standing upon another. It is
a blot on the face of the earth, and I will wipe it out utterly!"

"There are thousands of blots as black as that on earth, and I think
you will find nobler game than an obscure Russian provincial prison.
Russia has cities and palaces and fortresses that will make far
grander ruins than that--ruins that will be worthy monuments of
fallen despotism," replied the girl, who had been introduced by the
President as Radna Michaelis. "But here is some one else waiting to
make your acquaintance. This is Natasha. She has no other name among
us, but you will soon learn why she needs none."

Natasha was the other woman who had so keenly roused Arnold's
interest. Woman, however, she hardly was, for she was seemingly still
in her teens, and certainly could not have been more than twenty.

He had mixed but little with women, and during the past few years not
at all, and therefore the marvellous beauty of the girl who came
forward as Radna spoke seemed almost unearthly to him, and confused
his senses for the moment as some potent drug might have done. He
took her outstretched hand in awkward silence, and for an instant so
far forgot himself as to gaze blankly at her in speechless
admiration.

She could not help noticing it, for she was a woman, and for the same
reason she saw that it was so absolutely honest and involuntary that
it was impossible for any woman to take offence at it. A quick bright
flush swept up her lovely face as his hand closed upon hers, her
darkly-fringed lids fell for an instant over the most wonderful pair
of sapphire-blue eyes that Arnold had ever even dreamed of, and when
she raised them again the flush had gone, and she said in a sweet,
frank voice--

"I am the daughter of Natas, and he has desired me to bid you welcome
in his name, and I hope you will let me do so in my own as well. We
are all dying to see this wonderful invention of yours. I suppose you
are going to satisfy our feminine curiosity, are you not?"

The daughter of Natas! This lovely girl, in the first sweet flush of
her pure and innocent womanhood, the daughter of the unknown and
mysterious being whose ill-omened name caused a shudder if it was
only whispered in the homes of the rich and powerful; the name with
which the death-sentences of the Terrorists were invariably signed,
and which had come to be an infallible guarantee that they would be
carried out to the letter.

No death-warrants of the most powerful sovereigns of Europe were more
certain harbingers of inevitable doom than were those which bore this
dreaded name. Whether he were high or low, the man who received one
of them made ready for his end. He knew not where or when the fatal
blow would be struck. He only knew that the invisible hand of the
Terror would strike him as surely in the uttermost ends of the earth
as it would in the palace or the fortress. Never once had it missed
its aim, and never once had the slightest clue been obtained to the
identity of the hand that held the knife or pistol.

Some such thoughts as these flashed one after another through
Arnold's brain as he stood talking with Natasha. He saw at once why
she had only that one name. It was enough, and it was not long before
he learnt that it was the symbol of an authority in the Circle that
admitted of no question.

She was the envoy of him whose word was law, absolute and
irrevocable, to every member of the Brotherhood; to disobey whom was
death; and to obey whom had, so far at least, meant swift and
invariable success, even where it seemed least to be hoped for.

Of course, Natasha's almost girlish question about the air-ship was
really a command, which would have been none the less binding had she
only had her own beauty to enforce it. As she spoke the President and
Colston--who had only lost himself for the time behind a mask and
cloak--came up to Arnold and asked him if he was prepared to give an
exhibition of the powers of his model, and to explain its working and
construction to the Circle at once.

He replied that everything was perfectly ready for the trial, and
that he would set the model working for them in a few minutes. The
President then told him that the exhibition should take place in
another room, where there would be much more space than where they
were, and bade him bring the box and follow him.

A door was now opened in the wall of the room remote from that by
which he and Colston had entered, and through this the whole party
went down a short passage, and through another door at the end which
opened into a very large apartment, which, from the fact of its being
windowless, Arnold rightly judged to be underground, like the
Council-chamber that they had just left.

A single glance was enough to show him the chief purpose to which the
chamber was devoted. The wall at one end was covered with arm-racks
containing all the newest and most perfect makes of rifles and
pistols; while at the other end, about twenty paces distant, were
three electric signalling targets, graded, as was afterwards
explained to him, to one, three, and five hundred yards range.

In a word, the chamber was an underground range for rifle and pistol
practice, in which a volley could have been fired without a sound
being heard ten yards away. It was here that the accuracy of the
various weapons invented from time to time was tested; and here, too,
every member of the Circle, man and woman, practised with rifle and
pistol until an infallible aim was acquired. A register of scores was
kept, and at the head of it stood the name of Radna Michaelis.

A long table ran across the end at which the arm-racks were, and on
this Arnold laid the case containing the model, he standing on one
side of the table, and the members of the Circle on the other,
watching his movements with a curiosity that they took no trouble to
disguise.

He opened the case, feeling something like a scientific demonstrator,
with an advanced and critical class before him. In a moment the man
disappeared, and the mechanician and the enthusiast took his place.
As each part was taken out and laid upon the table, he briefly
explained its use; and then, last of all, came the hull of the
air-ship.

This was three feet long and six inches broad in its midships
diameter. It was made in two longitudinal sections of polished
aluminium, which shone like burnished silver. It would have been
cigar-shaped but for the fact that the forward end was drawn out into
a long sharp ram, the point of which was on a level with the floor of
the hull amidships as it lay upon the table. Two deep bilge-plates,
running nearly the whole length of the hull, kept it in an upright
position and prevented the blades of the propellers from touching the
table. For about half its whole length the upper part of the hull was
flattened and formed a deck from which rose three short strong masts,
each of which carried a wheel of thin metal whose spokes were six
inclined fans something like the blades of a screw.

A little lower than this deck there projected on each side a broad,
oblong, slightly curved sheet of metal, very thin, but strengthened
by means of wire braces, till it was as rigid as a plate of solid
steel, although it only weighed a few ounces. These air-planes worked
on an axis amidships, and could be inclined either way through an
angle of thirty degrees. At the pointed stern there revolved a
powerful four-bladed propeller, and from each quarter, inclined
slightly outwards from the middle line of the vessel, projected a
somewhat smaller screw working underneath the after end of the
air-planes.

The hull contained four small double-cylinder engines, one of which
actuated the stern-propeller, and the other three the fan-wheels and
side-propellers. There were, of course, no furnaces, boilers, or
condensers. Two slender pipes ran into each cylinder from suitably
placed gas reservoirs, or power-cylinders, as the engineer called
them, and that was all.

Arnold deftly and rapidly put the parts together, continuing his
running description as he did so, and in a few minutes the beautiful
miracle of ingenuity stood complete before the wondering eyes of the
Circle, and a murmur of admiration ran from lip to lip, bringing a
flush of pleasure to the cheek of its creator.

"There," said he, as he put the finishing touches to the apparatus,
"you see that she is a combination of two principles--those of the
Aëronef and the Aëroplane. The first reached its highest development
in Jules Verne's imaginary "Clipper of the Clouds," and the second in
Hiram Maxim's Aëroplane. Of course, Jules Verne's Aëronef was merely
an idea, and one that could never be realised while Robur's
mysterious source of electrical energy remained unknown--as it still
does.

"Maxim's Aëroplane is, as you all know, also an unrealised ideal so
far as any practical use is concerned. He has succeeded in making it
fly, but only under the most favourable conditions, and practically
without cargo. Its two fatal defects have been shown by experience to
be the comparatively overwhelming weight of the engine and the fuel
that he has to carry to develop sufficient power to rise from the
ground and progress against the wind, and the inability of the
machine to ascend perpendicularly to any required height.

"Without the power to do this no air-ship can be of any use save
under very limited conditions. You cannot carry a railway about with
you, or a station to get a start from every time you want to rise,
and you cannot always choose a nice level plain in which to come
down. Even if you could the Aëroplane would not rise again without
its rails and carriage. For purposes of warfare, then, it may be
dismissed as totally useless.

"In this machine, as you see, I have combined the two principles.
These helices on the masts will lift the dead weight of the ship
perpendicularly without the slightest help from the side-planes,
which are used to regulate the vessel's flight when afloat. I will
set the engines that work them in motion independently of the others
which move the propellers, and then you will see what I mean."

As he spoke, he set one part of the mechanism working. Those watching
saw the three helices begin to spin round, the centre one revolving
in an opposite direction to the other two, with a soft whirring sound
that gradually rose to a high-pitched note.

When they attained their full speed they looked like solid wheels,
and then the air-ship rose, at first slowly, and then more and more
swiftly, straight up from the table, until it strained hard at the
piece of cord which prevented it from reaching the roof.

A universal chorus of "bravas" greeted it as it rose, and every eye
became fixed on it as it hung motionless in the air, sustained by its
whirling helices. After letting it remain aloft for a few minutes
Arnold pulled it down again, saying as he did so--

"That, I think, proves that the machine can rise from any position
where the upward road is open, and without the slightest assistance
of any apparatus. Now it shall take a voyage round the room.

"You see it is steered by this rudder-fan under the stern propeller.
In the real ship it will be worked by a wheel, like the rudder of a
sea-going vessel; but in the model it is done by this lever, so that
I can control it by a couple of strings from the ground."

He went round to the other side of the table while he was speaking,
and adjusted the steering gear, stopping the engines meanwhile. Then
he put the model down on the floor, set all four engines to work, and
stood behind with the guiding-strings in his hands. The spectators
heard a louder and somewhat shriller whirring noise than before, and
the beautiful fabric, with its shining, silvery hull and side-planes,
rose slantingly from the ground and darted forward down the room,
keeping Arnold at a quick run with the rudder-strings tightly
strained.

Like an obedient steed, it instantly obeyed the slightest pull upon
either of them, and twice made the circuit of the room before its
creator pulled it down and stopped the machinery.

The experiment was a perfect and undeniable success in every respect,
and not one of those who saw it had the slightest doubt as to
Arnold's air-ship having at last solved the problem of aërial
navigation, and made the Brotherhood lords of a realm as wide as the
atmospheric ocean that encircles the globe.

As soon as the model was once more resting on the table, the
President came forward and, grasping the engineer by both hands, said
in a voice from which he made but little effort to banish the emotion
that he felt--

"Bravo, brother! Henceforth you shall be known to the Brotherhood as
the Master of the Air, for truly you have been the first among the
sons of men to fairly conquer it. Come, let us go back and talk, for
there is much to be said about this, and we cannot begin too soon to
make arrangements for building the first of our aërial fleet. You can
leave your model where it is in perfect safety, for no one ever
enters this room save ourselves."

So saying the President led the way to the Council-chamber, and
there, after the _Ariel_--as it had already been decided to name the
first air-ship--had been christened in anticipation in twenty-year
old champagne, the Circle settled down at once to business, and for a
good three hours discussed the engineer's estimate and plans for
building the first vessel of the aërial fleet.

At length all the practical details were settled, and the President
rose in token of the end of the conference. As he did so he said
somewhat abruptly to Arnold--

"So far so good. Now there is nothing more to be done but to lay
those plans before the Chief and get his authority for withdrawing
out of the treasury sufficient money to commence operations. I
presume you could reproduce them from memory if necessary--at any
rate, in sufficient outline to make them perfectly intelligible?"

"Certainly," was the reply. "I could reproduce them in _fac simile_
without the slightest difficulty. Why do you ask?"

"Because the Chief is in Russia, and you must go to him and place
them before him from memory. They are far too precious to be trusted
to any keeping, however trustworthy. There are such things as railway
accidents, and other forms of sudden death, to say nothing of the
Russian customs, false arrests, personal searches, and imprisonments
on mere suspicion.

"We can risk none of these, and so there is nothing for it but your
going to Petersburg and verbally explaining them to the Chief. You
can be ready in three days, I suppose?"

"Yes, in two, if you like," replied Arnold, not a little taken aback
at the unexpected suddenness of what he knew at once to be the first
order that was to test his obedience to the Brotherhood. "But as I am
absolutely ignorant of Russia and the Russians, I suppose you will
make such arrangements as will prevent my making any innocent but
possibly awkward mistakes."

"Oh yes," replied the President, with a smile, "all arrangements have
been made already, and I expect you will find them anything but
unpleasant. Natasha goes to Petersburg in company with another lady
member of the Circle whom you have not yet seen.

"You will go with them, and they will explain everything to you _en
route_, if they have no opportunity of doing so before you start. Now
let us go upstairs and have some supper. I am famished, and I suppose
every one else is too."

Arnold simply bowed in answer to the President; but one pair of eyes
at least in the room caught the quick, faint flush that rose in his
cheek as he was told in whose company he was to travel. As for
himself, if the journey had been to Siberia instead of Russia, he
would have felt nothing but pleasure at the prospect after that.

They left the Council-chamber by the passage and the ante-room, the
sentry standing to attention as they passed him, each giving the word
in turn, till the President came last and closed the doors behind
him. Then the sentry brought up the rear and extinguished the lights
as he left the passage.

Fifteen minutes later there sat down to supper, in the solidly
comfortable dining-room of the upper house, a party of ladies and
gentlemen who chatted through the meal as merrily and innocently as
though there were no such things as tyranny or suffering in the
world, and whom not the most acute observer would have taken for the
most dangerous and desperately earnest body of conspirators that ever
plotted the destruction, not of an empire, but of a civilisation and
a social order that it had taken twenty centuries to build up.




CHAPTER VII.

THE DAUGHTER OF NATAS.


Supper was over about eleven, and then the party adjourned to the
drawing-room, where for an hour or so Arnold sat and listened to such
music and singing as he had never heard in his life before. The songs
seemed to be in every language in Europe, and he did not understand
anything like half of them, so far, at least, as the words were
concerned.

They were, however, so far removed from the average drawing-room
medley of twaddle and rattle that the music interpreted the words
into its own universal language, and made them almost superfluous.

For the most part they were sad and passionate, and once or twice,
especially when Radna Michaelis was singing, Arnold saw tears well up
into the eyes of the women, and the brows of the men contract and
their hands clench with sudden passion at the recollection of some
terrible scene or story that was recalled by the song.

At last, close on midnight, the President rose from his seat and
asked Natasha to sing the "Hymn of Freedom." She acknowledged the
request with an inclination of her head, and then as Radna sat down
to the piano, and she took her place beside it, all the rest rose to
their feet like worshippers in a church.

The prelude was rather longer than usual, and as Radna played it
Arnold heard running through it, as it were, echoes of all the
patriotic songs of Europe from "Scots Wha Hae" and "The Shan van
Voght" to the forbidden Polish National Hymn and the Swiss Republican
song, which is known in England as "God Save the Queen." The prelude
ended with a few bars of the "Marseillaise," and then Natasha began.

It was a marvellous performance. As the air changed from nation to
nation the singer changed the language, and at the end of each verse
the others took up the strain in perfect harmony, till it sounded
like a chorus of the nations in miniature, each language coming in
its turn until the last verse was reached.

Then there was silence for a moment, and then the opening chords of
the "Marseillaise" rang out from the piano, slow and stately at
first, and then quickening like the tread of an army going into
battle.

Suddenly Natasha's voice soared up, as it were, out of the music, and
a moment later the Song of the Revolution rolled forth in a flood of
triumphant melody, above which Natasha's pure contralto thrilled
sweet and strong, till to Arnold's intoxicated senses it seemed like
the voice of some angel singing from the sky in the ears of men, and
it was not until the hymn had been ended for some moments that he was
recalled to earth by the President saying to him--

"Some day, perhaps, you will be floating in the clouds, and you will
hear that hymn rising from the throats of millions gathered together
from the ends of the earth, and when you hear that you will know that
our work is done, and that there is peace on earth at last."

"I hope so," replied the engineer quietly, "and, what is more, I
believe that some day I shall hear it."

"I believe so too," suddenly interrupted Radna, turning round on her
seat at the piano, "but there will be many a battle-song sung to the
accompaniment of battle-music before that happens. I wish"--

"That all Russia were a haystack, and that you were beside it with a
lighted torch," said Natasha, half in jest and half in earnest.

"Yes, truly!" replied Radna, turning round and dashing fiercely into
the "Marseillaise" again.

"I have no doubt of it. But, come, it is after midnight, and we have
to get back to Cheyne Walk. The princess will think we have been
arrested or something equally dreadful. Ah, Mr. Colston, we have a
couple of seats to spare in the brougham. Will you and our Admiral of
the Air condescend to accept a lift as far as Chelsea?"

"The condescension is in the offer, Natasha," replied Colston,
flushing with pleasure and glancing towards Radna the while. Radna
answered with an almost imperceptible sign of consent, and Colston
went on: "If it were in an utterly opposite direction"--

"You would not be asked to come, sir. So don't try to pay compliments
at the expense of common sense," laughed Natasha before he could
finish. "If you do you shall sit beside me instead of Radna all the
way."

There was a general smile at this retort, for Colston's avowed
devotion to Radna and the terrible circumstances out of which it had
sprung was one of the romances of the Circle.

As for Arnold, he could scarcely believe his ears when he heard that
he was to ride from Clapham Common to Chelsea sitting beside this
radiantly beautiful girl, behind whose innocence and gaiety there lay
the shadow of her mysterious and terrible parentage.

Lovely and gentle as she seemed, he knew even now how awful a power
she held in the slender little hand whose nervous clasp he could
still feel upon his own, and this knowledge seemed to raise an
invisible yet impassable barrier between him and the possibility of
looking upon her as under other circumstances it would have been
natural for a man to look upon so fair a woman.

Natasha's brougham was so far an improvement on those of the present
day that it had two equally comfortable seats, and on these the four
were cosily seated a few minutes after the party broke up. To Arnold,
and, doubtless, to Colston also, the miles flew past at an unheard-of
speed; but for all that, long before the carriage stopped at the
house in Cheyne Walk, he had come to the conviction that, for good or
evil, he was now bound to the Brotherhood by far stronger ties than
any social or political opinions could have formed.

After they had said good-night at the door, and received an
invitation to lunch for the next day to talk over the journey to
Russia, he and Colston decided to walk to the Savoy, for it was a
clear moonlit night, and each had a good deal to say to the other,
which could be better and more safely said in the open air than in a
cab. So they lit their cigars, buttoned up their coats, and started
off eastward along the Embankment to Vauxhall.

"Well, my friend, tell me how you have enjoyed your evening, and what
you think of the company," said Colston, by way of opening the
conversation.

"Until supper I had a very pleasant time of it. I enjoyed the
business part of the proceedings intensely, as any other mechanical
enthusiast would have done, I suppose. But I frankly confess that
after that my mind is in a state of complete chaos, in the midst of
which only one figure stands out at all distinctly."

"And that figure is?"

"Natasha. Tell me--who is she?"

"I know no more as to her true identity than you do, or else I would
answer you with pleasure."

"What! Do you mean to say"--

"I mean to say just what I have said. Not only do I not know who she
is, but I do not believe that more than two or three members of the
Circle, at the outside, know any more than I do. Those are, probably,
Nicholas Roburoff, the President of the Executive, and his wife, and
Radna Michaelis."

"Then, if Radna knows, how comes it that you do not know? You must
forgive me if I am presuming on a too short acquaintance; but it
certainly struck me to-night that you had very few secrets from each
other."

"There is no presumption about it, my dear fellow," replied Colston,
with a laugh. "It is no secret that Radna and I are lovers, and that
she will be my wife when I have earned her."

"Now you have raised my curiosity again," interrupted Arnold, in an
inquiring tone.

"And will very soon satisfy it. You saw that horrible picture in the
Council-chamber? Yes. Well, I will tell you the whole story of that
some day when we have more time; but for the present it will be
enough for me to tell you that I have sworn not to ask Radna to come
with me to the altar while a single person who was concerned in that
nameless crime remains alive.

"There were five persons responsible for it to begin with--the
governor of the prison, the prefect of police for the district, a
spy, who informed against her, and the two soldiers who executed the
infernal sentence. It happened nearly three years ago, and there are
two of them alive still--the governor and the prefect of police.

"Of course the Brotherhood would have removed them long ago had it
decided to do so; but I got the circumstances laid before Natas, by
the help of Natasha, and received permission to execute the sentences
myself. So far I have killed three with my own hand, and the other
two have not much longer to live.

"The governor has been transferred to Siberia, and will probably be
the last that I shall reach. The prefect is now in command of the
Russian secret police in London, and unless an accident happens he
will never leave England."

Colston spoke in a cold, passionless, merciless tone, just as a
lawyer might speak of a criminal condemned to die by the ordinary
process of the law, and as Arnold heard him he shuddered. But at the
same time the picture in the Council-chamber came up before his
mental vision, and he was forced to confess that men who could so far
forget their manhood as to lash a helpless woman up to a triangle and
flog her till her flesh was cut to ribbons, were no longer men but
wild beasts, whose very existence was a crime. So he merely said--

"They were justly slain. Now tell me more about Natasha."

"There is very little more that I can tell you, I'm afraid. All I
know is that the Brotherhood of the Terror is the conception and
creation of a single man, and that that man is Natas, the father of
Natasha, as she is known to us. His orders come to us either directly
in writing through Natasha, or indirectly through him you have heard
spoken of as the Chief."

"Oh, then the Chief is not Natas?"

"No, we have all of us seen him. In fact, when he is in London he
always presides at the Circle meetings. You would hardly believe it,
but he is an English nobleman, and Secretary to the English Embassy
at Petersburg."

"Then he is Lord Alanmere, and an old college friend of mine!"
exclaimed Arnold. "I saw his name in the paper the night before last.
It was mentioned in the account of the murder"--

"We don't call those murders, my friend," drily interrupted Colston;
"we call them what they really are--executions."

"I beg your pardon; I was using the phraseology of the newspaper.
What was his crime?"

"I don't know. But the fact that the Chief was there when he died is
quite enough for me. Well, as I was saying, the Chief, as we call
him, is the visible and supreme head of the Brotherhood so far as we
are concerned. We know that Natas exists, and that he and the Chief
admit no one save Natasha to their councils.

"They control the treasury absolutely, and apart from the
contributions of those of the members who can afford to make them,
they appear to provide the whole of the funds. Of course, Lord
Alanmere, as you know, is enormously wealthy, and probably Natas is
also rich. At any rate, there is never any want of money where the
work of the Brotherhood is concerned.

"The estimates are given to Natasha when the Chief is not present,
and at the next meeting she brings the money in English gold and
notes, or in foreign currency as may be required, and that is all we
know about the finances.

"Perhaps I ought to tell you that there is also a very considerable
mystery about the Chief himself. When he presides at the Council
meetings he displays a perfectly marvellous knowledge of both the
members and the working of the Brotherhood.

"It would seem that nothing, however trifling, is hidden from him;
and yet when any of us happen to meet him, as we often do, in
Society, he treats us all as the most perfect strangers, unless we
have been regularly introduced to him as ordinary acquaintances. Even
then he seems utterly ignorant of his connection with the
Brotherhood.

"The first time I met him outside the Circle was at a ball at the
Russian Embassy. I went and spoke to him, giving the sign of the
Inner Circle as I did so. To my utter amazement, he stared at me
without a sign of recognition, and calmly informed me, in the usual
way, that I had the advantage of him.

"Of course I apologised, and he accepted the apology with perfect
good humour, but as an utter stranger would have done. A little later
Natasha came in with the Princess Ornovski, whom you are going to
Russia with, and who is there one of the most trusted agents of the
Petersburg police. I told her what had happened.

"She looked at me for a moment rather curiously with those wonderful
eyes of hers; then she laughed softly, and said, 'Come, I will set
that at rest by introducing you; but mind, not a word about politics
or those horrible secret societies, as you value my good opinion.'

"I understood from this that there was something behind which could
not be explained there, where every other one you danced with might
be a spy, and I was introduced to his Lordship, and we became very
good friends in the ordinary social way; but I failed to gather the
slightest hint from his conversation that he even knew of the
existence of the Brotherhood.

"When we left I drove home with Natasha and the Princess to supper,
and on the way Natasha told me that his Lordship found it necessary
to lead two entirely distinct lives, and that he adhered so rigidly
to this rule that he never broke it even with her. Since then I have
been most careful to respect what, after all, is a very wise, if not
an absolutely necessary, precaution on his part."

"And, now," said Arnold, speaking in a tone that betrayed not a
little hesitation and embarrassment, "if you can do so, answer me one
more question, and do so as shortly and directly as you can. Is
Natasha in love with, or betrothed to, any member of the Brotherhood
as far as you know?"

Colston stopped and looked at him with a laugh in his eyes. Then he
put his hand on his shoulder and said--

"As I thought, and feared! You have not escaped the common lot of all
heart-whole men upon whom those terrible eyes of hers have looked.
The Angel of the Revolution, as we call her among ourselves, is
peerless among the daughters of men. What more natural, then, that
all the sons of men should fall speedy victims to her fatal charms?
So far as I know, every man who has ever seen her is more or less in
love with her--and mostly more!

"As for the rest, I am as much in the dark as you are, save for the
fact that I know, on the authority of Radna, that she is not
betrothed to any one, and, so far as _she_ knows, still in the
blissful state of maiden fancy-freedom."

"Thank God for that!" said Arnold, with an audible sigh of relief.
Then he went on in somewhat hurried confusion, "But there, of course,
you think me a presumptuous ass, and so I am; wherefore"--

"There is no need for you to talk nonsense, my dear fellow. There
never can be presumption in an honest man's love, no matter how
exalted the object of it may be. Besides, are you not now the central
hope of the Revolution, and is not yours the hand that shall hurl
destruction on its enemies?

"As for Natasha, peerless and all as she is, has not the poet of the
ages said of just such as her--

  She's beautiful, and therefore to be woo'd;
  She is a woman: therefore to be won?

"And who, too, has a better chance of winning her than you will have
when you are commanding the aërial fleet of the Brotherhood, and,
like a very Jove, hurling your destroying bolts from the clouds, and
deciding the hazard of war when the nations of Europe are locked in
the death-struggle? Why, you see such a prospect makes even me
poetical.

"Seriously, though, you must not consider the distance between you
too great. Remember that you are a very different person now to what
you were a couple of days ago. Without any offence, I may say that
you were then nameless, while now you have the chance of making a
name that will go down to all time as that of the solver of the
greatest problem of this or any other age.

"Added to this, remember that Natasha, after all, is a woman, and,
more than that, a woman devoted heart and soul to a great cause, in
which great deeds are soon to be done. Great deeds are still the
shortest way to a woman's heart, and that is the way you must take if
you are to hope for success."

"I will!" simply replied Arnold, and the tone in which the two words
were said convinced Colston that he meant all that they implied to
its fullest extent.




CHAPTER VIII.

LEARNING THE PART.


It was nearly eleven the next morning by the time Arnold and Colston
had finished breakfast. This was mostly due to the fact that Arnold
had passed an almost entirely sleepless night, and had only begun to
doze off towards morning. The events of the previous evening kept on
repeating themselves in various sequences time after time, until his
brain reeled in the whirl of emotions that they gave rise to.

Although of a strongly mathematical and even mechanical turn of mind,
the young engineer was also an enthusiast, and therefore there was a
strong colouring of romance in his nature which lifted him far above
the level upon which his mere intellect was accustomed to work.

Where intellect alone was concerned--as, for instance, in the working
out of a problem in engineering or mechanics--he was cool,
calculating, and absolutely unemotional. His highly-disciplined mind
was capable of banishing every other subject from consideration save
the one which claimed the attention of the hour, and of incorporating
itself wholly with the work in hand until it was finished.

These qualities would have been quite sufficient to assure his
success in life on conventional lines. They would have made him rich,
and perhaps famous, but they would never have made him a great
inventor; for no one can do anything really great who is not a
dreamer as well as a worker.

It was because he was a dreamer that he had sacrificed everything to
the working out of his ideal, and risked his life on the chance of
success, and it was for just the same reason that the tremendous
purposes of the Brotherhood had been able to fire his imagination
with luridly brilliant dreams of a gigantic world-tragedy in which
he, armed with almost supernatural powers, should play the central
part.

This of itself would have been enough to make all other
considerations of trivial moment in his eyes, and to bind him
irrevocably to the Brotherhood. He saw, it is true, that a frightful
amount of slaughter and suffering would be the price either of
success or failure in so terrific a struggle; but he also knew that
that struggle was inevitable in some form or other, and whether he
took a part in it or not.

But since the last sun had set a new element had come into his life,
and was working in line with both his imagination and his ambition.
So far he had lived his life without any other human love than what
was bound up with his recollections of his home and his boyhood. As a
man he had never loved any human being. Science had been his only
mistress, and had claimed his undivided devotion, engrossing his mind
and intellect completely, but leaving his heart free.

And now, as it were in an instant, a new mistress had come forward
out of the unknown. She had put her hand upon his heart, and, though
no words of human speech had passed between them, save the merest
commonplaces, her soul had said to his, "This is mine. I have called
it into life, and for me it shall live until the end."

He had heard this as plainly as though it had been said to him with
the lips of flesh, and he had acquiesced in the imperious claim with
a glad submission which had yet to be tinged with the hope that it
might some day become a mastery.

Thus, as the silent, sleepless hours went by, did he review over and
over again the position in which he found himself on the threshold of
his strange new life, until at last physical exhaustion brought sleep
to his eyes if not to his brain, and he found himself flying over the
hills and vales of dreamland in his air-ship, with the roar of battle
and the smoke of ruined towns far beneath him, and Natasha at his
side, sharing with him the dominion of the air that his genius had
won.

At length Colston came in to tell him that the breakfast was
spoiling, and that it was high time to get up if they intended to be
in time for their appointment at Chelsea. This brought him out of bed
with effective suddenness, and he made a hasty toilet for breakfast,
leaving more important preparations until afterwards.

During the meal their conversation naturally turned chiefly on the
visit that they were to pay, and Colston took the opportunity of
explaining one or two things that it was necessary for him to know
with regard to the new acquaintance that he was about to make at
Chelsea.

"So far as the outside world is concerned," said he, "Natasha is the
niece of the Princess Ornovski. She is the daughter of a sister of
hers, who married an English gentleman, named Darrel, who was drowned
with his wife about twelve years ago, when the _Albania_ was wrecked
off the coast of Portugal. The Princess had a sister, who was drowned
with her husband in the _Albania_, and she left a daughter about
Natasha's then age, but who died of consumption shortly after in
Nice.

"Under these circumstances, it was, of course, perfectly easy for the
Princess to adopt Natasha, and introduce her into Society as her
niece as soon as she reached the age of coming out.

"This has been of immense service to the Brotherhood, as the Princess
is, as I told you, one of the most implicitly trusted allies of the
Petersburg police. She is received at the Russian Court, and is
therefore able to take Natasha into the best Russian Society, where
her extraordinary beauty naturally enables her to break as many
hearts as she likes, and to learn secrets which are of the greatest
importance to the Brotherhood.

"Her Society name is Fedora Darrel, and it will scarcely be necessary
to tell you that outside our own Circle no such being as Natasha has
any existence."

"I perfectly understand," replied Arnold. "The name shall never pass
my lips save in privacy, and indeed it is hardly likely that it will
ever do so even then, for your habit of calling each other by your
Christian names is too foreign to my British insularity."

"It is a Russian habit, as you, of course, know, and added to that,
we are, so far as the Cause is concerned, all brothers and sisters
together, and so it comes natural to us. Anyhow, you will have to use
it with Natasha, for in the Circle she has no other name, and to call
her Miss Darrel there would be to produce something like an
earthquake."

"Oh, in that case, I daresay I shall be able to avoid the calamity,
though there will seem to be a presumption about it that will not
make me very comfortable at first."

"Too much like addressing one's sweetheart, eh?"

This brought the conversation to a sudden stop, for Arnold's only
reply to it was a quick flush, and a lapse into silence that was a
good deal more eloquent than any verbal reply could have been.
Colston noticed it with a smile, and got up and lit a pipe.

For the first time for a good few years Arnold took considerable
pains with his toilet that morning. A new fit-out had just been
delivered by a tailor who had promised the things within twenty-four
hours, and had kept his word. The consequences were that he was able
to array himself in perfect morning costume, from his hat to his
boots, and that was what it had not been his to do since he left
college.

Colston had recommended him in his easy friendly way to pay
scrupulous attention to externals in the part that he would
henceforth have to play before the world. He fully saw the wisdom of
this advice, for he knew that, however well a part may be played, if
it is not dressed to perfection, some sharp eyes will see that it is
a part and not a reality.

The playing of his part was to begin that day, and he recognised that
at least one of the purposes of his visit to Natasha was the
determining of what that part was to be. He thus looked forward with
no little curiosity to the events of the afternoon, quite apart from
the supreme interest that centred in his hostess.

They started out nearly a couple of hours before they were due at
Cheyne Walk, as they had several orders to give with regard to
Arnold's outfit for the journey that was before him; and this done,
they reached the house about a quarter of an hour before lunch time.

They were received in the most delightful of sitting-rooms by a very
handsome, aristocratic-looking woman, who might have been anywhere
between forty and fifty. She shook hands very cordially with Arnold,
saying as she did so--

"Welcome, Richard Arnold! The friends of the Cause are mine, and I
have heard much about you already from Natasha, so that I already
seem to know you. I am very sorry that I was not able to be at the
Circle last night to see what you had to show. Natasha tells me that
it is quite a miracle of genius."

"She is too generous in her praise," replied Arnold, speaking as
quietly as he could in spite of the delight that the words gave him.
"It is no miracle, but only the logical result of thought and work.
Still, I hope that it will be found to realise its promise when the
time of trial comes."

"Of that I have no doubt, from all that I hear," said the Princess.
"Before long I shall hope to see it for myself. Ah, here is Natasha.
Come, I must introduce you afresh, for you do not know her yet as the
world knows her."

Arnold heard the door open behind him as the Princess spoke, and,
turning round, saw Natasha coming towards him with her hand
outstretched and a smile of welcome on her beautiful face. Before
their hands met the Princess moved quietly between them and said,
half in jest and half in earnest--

"Fedora, permit me to present to you Mr. Richard Arnold, who is to
accompany us to Russia to inspect the war-balloon offered to our
Little Father the Tsar. Mr. Arnold, my niece, Fedora Darrel. There,
now you know each other."

"I am delighted to make your acquaintance, Mr. Arnold," said Natasha,
with mock gravity as they shook hands. "I have heard much already of
your skill in connection with aërial navigation, and I have no doubt
but that your advice will be of the greatest service to his Majesty."

"That is as it may be," answered Arnold, at once entering into the
somewhat grim humour of the situation. "But if it is possible I
should like to hear something a little definite as to this mission
with which I have been, I fear, undeservingly honoured. I have been
very greatly interested in the problem of aërial navigation for some
years past, but I must confess that this is the first I have heard of
these particular war-balloons."

"It is for the purpose of enlightening you on that subject that this
little party has been arranged," said the Princess, turning for the
moment away from Colston, with whom she was talking earnestly in a
low tone. "Ha! There goes the lunch-bell. Mr. Colston, your arm.
Fedora, will you show Mr. Arnold the way?"

Arnold opened the door for the Princess to go out, and then followed
with Natasha on his arm. As they went out, she said in a low tone to
him--

"I think, if you don't mind, you had better begin at once to call me
Miss Darrel, so as to get into the way of it. A slip might be
serious, you know."

"Your wishes are my laws, Miss Darrel," replied he, the name slipping
as easily off his tongue as if he had known her by it for months. It
may have been only fancy on his part, he thought he felt just the
lightest imaginable pressure on his arm as he spoke. At any rate, he
was vain enough or audacious enough to take the impression for a
reality, and walked the rest of the way to the dining-room on air.

The meal was dainty and perfectly served, but there were no servants
present, for obvious reasons, and so they waited on themselves.
Colston sat opposite the Princess and carved the partridges, while
Arnold was _vis-à-vis_ to Natasha, a fact which had a perceptible
effect upon his appetite.

"Now," said the Princess, as soon as every one was helped, "I will
enlighten you, Mr. Arnold, as to your mission to Russia. One part of
the business, I presume, you are already familiar with?"

Arnold bowed his assent, and she went on--

"Then the other is easily explained. Interested as you are in the
question, I suppose there is no need to tell you that for several
years past the Tsar has had an offer open to all the world of a
million sterling for a vessel that will float in the air, and be
capable of being directed in its course as a ship at sea can be
directed."

"Yes, I am well aware of the fact. Pray proceed." As he said this
Arnold glanced across the table at Natasha, and a swift smile and a
flash from her suddenly unveiled eyes told him that she, too, was
thinking of how the world's history might have been altered had the
Tsar's million been paid for his invention. Then the Princess went
on--

"Well, through a friend at the Russian Embassy, I have learnt that a
French engineer has, as he says, perfected a balloon constructed on a
new principle, which he claims will meet the conditions of the Tsar's
offer.

"My friend also told me that his Majesty had decided to take an
entirely disinterested opinion with regard to this invention, and
asked me if I could recommend any English engineer who had made a
study of aërial navigation, and who would be willing to go to Russia,
superintend the trials of the war-balloon, and report as to their
success or otherwise.

"This happened a few days ago only, and as I had happened to read an
article that you will remember you wrote about six months ago in the
_Nineteenth_, or, as it is now called, the _Twentieth Century_, I
thought of your name, and said I would try to find some one. Two days
later I got news from the Circle of your invention--never mind how;
you will learn that later on--and called at the Embassy to say I had
found some one whose judgment could be absolutely relied upon. Now,
wasn't that kind of me, to give you such a testimonial as that to his
Omnipotence the Tsar of All the Russias?"

Once more Arnold bowed his acknowledgments--this time somewhat
ironically, and Natasha interrupted the narrative by saying with a
spice of malice in her voice--

"No doubt the Little Father will duly recognise your kindness,
Princess, when he gets quite to the bottom of the matter."

"I hope he will," replied the Princess, "but that is a matter of the
future--and of considerable doubt as well." Then, turning to Arnold
again, she continued--

"You will now, of course, see the immense advantage there appeared to
be in getting you to examine these war-balloons. They are evidently
the only possible rivals to your own invention in the field, and
therefore it is of the utmost importance that you should know their
strength or their weakness, as the case may be.

"Well, that is all I have to say, so far. It has been decided that
you shall go, if you are willing, with us to Petersburg the day after
to-morrow to see the balloon, and make your report. All your expenses
will be paid on the most liberal scale, for the Tsar is no niggard in
spending either his own or other people's money, and you will have a
handsome fee into the bargain for your trouble."

"So far as the work is concerned, of course, I undertake it
willingly," said Arnold, as the Princess stopped speaking. "But it
hardly seems to me to be right that I should take even the Tsar's
money under such circumstances. To tell you the truth, it looks to me
rather uncomfortably like false pretences."

Again Natasha's eyes flashed approval across the table, but
nevertheless she said--

"You seem to forget, my friend, that we are at war with the Tsar, and
all's fair in--in love and war. Besides, if you have any scruples
about keeping the fee for your professional services--which, after
all, you will render as honestly as though it were the merest matter
of business--you can put it into the treasury, and so ease your
conscience. Remember, too," she went on more seriously, "how the
enormous wealth of this same Tsar has swollen by the confiscation of
fortunes whose possessors had committed no other crime than becoming
obnoxious to the corrupt bureaucracy."

"I will take the fee if I fairly earn it, Miss Darrel," replied
Arnold, returning the glance as he spoke, "and it shall be my first
contribution to the treasury of the Brotherhood."

"Spoken like a sensible man," chimed in the Princess. "After all, it
is no worse than spoiling the Egyptians, and you have scriptural
authority for that. However, you can do as you like with his
Majesty's money when you get it. The main fact is that you have the
opportunity of going to earn it, and that Colonel Martinov is coming
here to tea this afternoon to bring our passports, specially
authorising us to travel without customs examination or any kind of
questioning to any part of the Tsar's dominions, and that, I can
assure you, is a very exceptional honour indeed."

"Who did you say? Martinov? Is that the Colonel Martinov who is the
director of the secret police here?" asked Colston hurriedly.

"Yes," replied the Princess, "the same. Why do you ask?"

"Because," said Colston quietly, "he received the sentence of death
nearly a month ago, and to-morrow night he will be executed, unless
there is some accident. It was he who stood with the governor of
Brovno in the prison-yard and watched Radna Michaelis flogged by the
soldiers. I received news this morning that the arrangements are
complete, and that the sentence will be carried out to-morrow night."

"Yes, that is so," added Natasha, as Colston ceased speaking.
"Everything is settled. It is therefore well that he should do
something useful before he meets his fate."

"How curious that it should just happen so!" said the Princess
calmly, as she rose from the table and moved towards the door
followed by Natasha.

As soon as the ladies had left the room, Colston and Arnold lit their
cigarettes and chatted while they smoked over their last glass of
claret. Arnold would have liked to have asked more about the coming
tragedy, but something in Colston's manner restrained him; and so the
conversation remained on the subject of the Russian journey until
they returned to the sitting-room.




CHAPTER IX.

THE BEGINNING OF SORROWS.


On the 6th of March 1904, just six months after Arnold's journey to
Russia, a special meeting of the Inner Circle of the Terrorists took
place in the Council-chamber, at the house on Clapham Common.

Although it was only attended by twelve persons all told, and those
men and women whose names were unknown outside the circle of their
own Society and the records of the Russian police, it was the most
momentous conference that had taken place in the history of the world
since the council of war that Abdurrhaman the Moslem had held with
his chieftains eleven hundred and seventy-two years before, and, by
taking their advice, spared the remnants of Christendom from the
sword of Islam.

Then the fate of the world hung in the balance of a council of war,
and the supremacy of the Cross or the Crescent depended, humanly
speaking, upon the decision of a dozen warriors. Now the fate of the
civilisation that was made possible by that decision, lay at the
mercy of a handful of outlaws and exiles who had laboriously brought
to perfection the secret schemes of a single man.

The work of the Terrorists was finally complete. Under the whole
fabric of Society lay the mines which a single spark would now
explode, and above this slumbering volcano the earth was trembling
with the tread of millions of armed men, divided into huge hostile
camps, and only waiting until Diplomacy had finished its work in the
dark, and gave the long-awaited signal of inevitable and universal
war.

To-night that spark was to be shaken from the torch of Revolution,
and to-morrow the first of the mines would explode. After that, if
the course to be determined on by the Terrorist Council failed to
arrive at the results which it was designed to reach, the armies of
Europe would fight their way through the greatest war that the world
had ever seen, the Fates would once more decide in favour of the
strongest battalions, the fittest would triumph, and a new era of
military despotism would begin--perhaps neither much better nor much
worse than the one it would succeed.

If, on the other hand, the plans of the Terrorists were successfully
worked out to their logical conclusion, it would not be war only, but
utter destruction that Society would have to face. And then with
dissolution would come anarchy. The thrones of the world would be
overthrown, the fabric of Society would be dissolved, commerce would
come to an end, the structure that it had taken twenty centuries of
the discipline of war and the patient toil of peace to build up,
would crumble into ruins in a few short months, and then--well, after
that no man could tell what would befall the remains of the human
race that had survived the deluge. The means of destruction were at
hand, and they would be used without mercy, but for the rest no man
could speak.

When Nicholas Roburoff, the President of the Executive, rose in his
place at eight o'clock to explain the business in hand, every member
present saw at a glance, by the gravity of his demeanour, that the
communication that he had to make was of no ordinary nature, but even
they were not prepared for the catastrophe that he announced in the
first sentence that he uttered.

"Friends," he said, in a voice that was rendered deeply impressive by
the emotion that he vainly tried to conceal, "it is my mournful duty
to tell you that she whom any one of us would willingly shed our
blood to serve or save from the slightest evil, our beautiful and
beloved Angel of the Revolution, as we so fondly call her, Natasha,
the daughter of the Master, has, in the performance of her duty to
the Cause, fallen into the hands of Russia."

Save for a low, murmuring groan that ran round the table, the news
was received in silence. It was too terrible, too hideous in the
awful meaning that its few words conveyed, for any exclamations of
grief, or any outburst of anger, to express the emotions that it
raised.

Not one of those who heard it but had good reason to know what it
meant for a revolutionist to fall into the hands of Russia. For a man
it meant the last extremity of human misery that flesh and blood
could bear, but for a young and beautiful woman it was a fate that no
words could describe--a doom that could only be thought of in silence
and despair; and so the friends of Natasha were silent, though they
did not yet despair. Roburoff bowed his head in acknowledgment of the
inarticulate but eloquent endorsement of his words, and went on--

"You already know the outcome of Richard Arnold's visit to Russia;
how he was present at the trial of the Tsar's war-balloon, and was
compelled to pronounce it such a complete success, that the Autocrat
at once gave orders for the construction of a fleet of fifty
aërostats of the same pattern; and how, thanks to the warning
conveyed by Anna Ornovski, he was able to prevent his special
passport being stolen by a police agent, and so to foil the designs
of the chief of the Third Section to stop him taking the secret of
the construction of the war-balloon out of Russia. You also know that
he brought back the Chief's authority to build an air-ship after the
model which was exhibited to us here, and that since his return he
has been prosecuting that work on Drumcraig Island, one of the
possessions of the Chief in the Outer Hebrides, which he placed at
his disposal for the purpose.

"You know, also, that Natasha and Anna Ornovski went to Russia partly
to discover the terms of the secret treaty that we believed to exist
between France and Russia, and partly to warn, and, if possible,
remove from Russian soil a large number of our most valuable allies,
whose names had been revealed to the Minister of the Interior,
chiefly through the agency of the spy Martinov, who was executed in
this room six months ago.

"The first part of the task was achieved, not without difficulty, but
with complete success, and of that more anon. The second part was
almost finished when Natasha and Anna Ornovski were surprised in the
house of Alexei Kassatkin, a member of the Moscow Nihilist Circle, in
the Bolshoi Dmitrietka. He had been betrayed by one of his own
servants, and a police visit was the result.

"Added to this there is reason to believe that she had, quite apart
from this, become acquainted with enough official secrets to make her
removal desirable in high quarters. I need not tell you that that is
the usual way in which the Tsar rewards those of his secret servants
who get to know too much.

"The fact of her being found in the house of a betrayed Nihilist was
taken as sufficient proof of sympathy or complicity, and she was
arrested. Natasha, as Fedora Darrel, claimed to be a British subject,
and, as such, to be allowed to go free in virtue of the Tsar's safe
conduct, which she exhibited. Instead of that she was taken before
the chief of the Moscow police, rudely interrogated, and then
brutally searched. Unhappily, in the bosom of her dress was found a
piece of paper bearing some of the new police cypher. That was
enough. That night they were thrown into prison, and three days later
taken to the convict depot under sentence of exile by administrative
process to Sakhalin for life.

"You know what that means for a beautiful woman like Natasha. She
will not go to Sakhalin. They do not bury beauty like hers in such an
abode of desolation as that. If she cannot be rescued, she will only
have two alternatives before her. She will become the slave and
plaything of some brutal governor or commandant at one of the
stations, or else she will kill herself. Of course, of these two she
would choose the latter--if she could and when she could. Should she
be driven to that last resort of despair, she shall be avenged as
woman never yet was avenged; but rescue must, if possible, come
before revenge.

"The information that we have received from the Moscow agent tells us
that the convict train to which Natasha and Anna Ornovski are
attached left the depot nearly a fortnight ago; they were to be taken
by train in the usual way to Nizhni Novgorod, thence by barge on the
Volga and Kama to Perm, and on by rail to Tiumen, the forwarding
station for the east. Until they reach Tiumen they will be safe from
anything worse than what the Russians are pleased to call
'discipline,' but once they disappear into the wilderness of Siberia
they will be lost to the world, and far from all law but the will of
their official slave-drivers.

"It has, therefore, been decided that the rescue shall be attempted
before the chain-gang leaves Tiumen, if it can be reached in time. As
nearly as we can calculate, the march will begin on the morning of
Friday the 9th, that is to say, in three nights and one day from now.
Happily we possess the means of making the rescue, if it can be
accomplished by human means. I have received a report from Richard
Arnold saying that the _Ariel_ is complete, and that she has made a
perfectly satisfactory trial trip to the clouds. The _Ariel_ is the
only vehicle in existence that could possibly reach the frontier of
Siberia in the given time, and it is fitting that her first duty
should be the rescue of the Angel of the Revolution from the clutches
of the Tyrant of the North.

"Alexis Mazanoff, it is the will of the Master that you shall take
these instructions to Richard Arnold and accompany him on the voyage
in order to show him what course to steer, and assist him in every
way possible. You will find the Chief's yacht at Port Patrick ready
to convey you to Drumcraig Island. When you have heard what is
further necessary for you to hear, you will take the midnight express
from Euston. Have you any preparations to make?"

"No," replied Mazanoff, or Colston, to call him by a name more
familiar to the reader. "I can start in half an hour if necessary,
and on such an errand you may, of course, depend on me not to lose
much time. I presume there are full instructions here?"

"Yes, both for the rescue and for your conduct afterwards, whether
you are successful or unsuccessful," said the President. Then turning
to the others he continued--

"You may now rest assured that all that can be done to rescue Natasha
will be done, and we must therefore turn to other matters. I said a
short time ago that the conditions of the secret treaty between
France and Russia had been discovered by the two brave women who are
now suffering for their devotion to the cause of the Revolution. A
full copy of them is in the hands of the Chief, who arrives in London
to-day, and will at once lay the documents before Mr. Balfour, the
Premier.

"It is extremely hostile to England, and amounts, in fact, to a
compact on the part of France to declare war and seize the Suez
Canal, as soon as the first shot is fired between Great Britain and
Russia. In return for this, Russia is to invade Germany and Austria,
destroy the eastern frontier fortresses with her fleet of
war-balloons, and then cross over and do the same on the Rhine, while
France at last throws herself upon her ancient foe.

"Meanwhile, the French fleet is to concentrate in the Mediterranean
as quietly and rapidly as possible, before war actually breaks out,
so as to be able to hold the British and Italians in check, and shut
the Suez Canal, while Russia, who is pushing her troops forward to
the Hindu Kush, gets ready for a dash at the passes, and a rush upon
Cashmere, before Britain can get sufficient men out to India by the
Cape to give her very much trouble.

"As there also exists a secret compact between Britain and the Triple
Alliance, binding all four powers to declare war the moment one is
threatened, the disclosure of this treaty must infallibly lead to war
in a few weeks. In addition to this, measures have been taken to
detach Italy from the Triple Alliance at the last moment, if
possible. Success in this respect is, however, somewhat uncertain.

"To make assurance doubly sure, the Chief informs me that he has
ordered Ivan Brassoff, who is in command of a large reconnoitring
party on the Afghan side of the Hindu Kush, to provoke reprisals from
a similar party of Indian troops who have been told off to watch
their movements. Captain Brassoff is one of us, and can be depended
upon to obey at all costs. He will do this in a fortnight from now,
and therefore we may feel confident that Great Britain and Russia
will be at war within a month.

"With the first outbreak of war our work for the present ceases, so
far as active interference goes. We shall therefore withdraw from the
scene of action until the arrival of the supreme moment when the
nations of Europe shall be locked in the death-struggle, and the fate
of the world will rest in our hands. The will of the Master now is
that all the members of the Brotherhood shall at once wind up their
businesses, and turn all of their possessions that are not portable
and useful into money.

"A large steamer has been purchased and manned with members of the
Outer Circle who are sailors by profession. She is now being loaded
at Liverpool with all the machinery and materials necessary for the
construction of twelve air-ships like the _Ariel_. This steamer, when
ready for sea, will sail, ostensibly, for Rio de Janeiro with a cargo
of machinery, but in reality for Drumcraig, where she will embark the
workmen who will be left there by the _Ariel_ with all the working
plant on the island, and from there she will proceed to a lonely
island off the West Coast of Africa, between Cape Blanco and Cape
Verde, where new works will be set up and the fleet of air-ships put
together as rapidly as possible.

"The position of this island is in the instructions which Alexis
Mazanoff takes to Drumcraig to-night, and the _Ariel_ will rendezvous
there when the work that is in hand for her is done. The members of
the Brotherhood will, of course, go in the steamer as passengers for
Rio, so that no suspicions may be aroused, and every one must be
ready to embark in ten days from now.

"That is all I have to say at present in the name of the Master. And
now, Alexis Mazanoff, it is time you set out. We shall remain here
and discuss every detail fully so that nothing may be overlooked. You
will find that everything has been provided for in the instructions
you have, so go, and may the Master of Destiny be with you!"

As he spoke he held out his hand, which the young man grasped
heartily, saying--

"Farewell! I will obey to the death, and if success can be earned we
will earn it. If not, you shall hear of the _Ariel's_ work in Russia
before the week is out."

He then took leave of the other members of the Council, coming last
to Radna. As their hands clasped she said--

"I wish I could come with you, but that is impossible. But bring
Natasha back to us safe and sound, and there is nothing that you can
ask of me that I will not say 'yes' to. Go, and God speed your good
work. Farewell!"

For all answer he took her in his arms before them all. Their lips
met in one long silent kiss, and a moment later he had gone to strike
the first blow in the coming world-war, and to bring the beginning of
sorrows on the Tyrant of the North.




CHAPTER X.

THE "ARIEL."


On the sixth stroke of twelve that night the Scotch express drew out
of Euston Station. At half-past nine the next morning, the _Lurline_,
Lord Alanmere's yacht, steamed out of Port Patrick Harbour, and at
one o'clock precisely she dropped her anchor in the little inlet that
served for a harbour at Drumcraig.

Colston had the quarter-boat lowered and pulled ashore without a
moment's delay, and as his foot touched the shore Arnold grasped his
hand, and, after the first words of welcome, asked for the latest
news of Natasha.

Without immediately answering, Colston put his arm through his, drew
him away from the men who were standing about, and told him as
briefly and gently as he could the terrible news of the calamity that
had befallen the Brotherhood, and the errand upon which he had come.

Arnold received the blow as a brave man should--in silence. His now
bronzed face turned pale, his brows contracted, and his teeth
clenched till Colston could hear them gritting upon each other. Then
a great wave of agony swept over his soul as a picture too horrible
for contemplation rose before his eyes, and after that came calm, the
calm of rapid thought and desperate resolve.

He remembered the words that Natasha had used in a letter that she
had given him when she took leave of him in Russia. "We shall trust
to you to rescue us, and, if that is no longer possible, to avenge
us."

Yes, and now the time had come to justify that trust and prove his
own devotion. It should be proved to the letter, and if there was
cause for vengeance, the proof should be written in blood and flame
over all the wide dominions of the Tsar. Grief might come after, when
there was time for it; but this was the hour of action, and a strange
savage joy seemed to come with the knowledge that the safety of the
woman he loved now depended mainly upon his own skill and daring.

Colston respected his silence, and waited until he spoke. When he did
he was astonished at the difference that those few minutes had made
in the young engineer. The dreamer and the enthusiast had become the
man of action, prompt, stern, and decided. Colston had never before
heard from his lips the voice in which he at length said to him--

"Where is this place? How far is it as the crow flies from here?"

"At a rough guess I should say about two thousand two hundred miles,
almost due east, and rather less than two hundred miles on the other
side of the Ourals."

"Good! That will be twenty hours' flight for us, or less if this
south-west wind holds good."

"What!" exclaimed Colston. "Twenty hours, did you say? You must
surely be making some mistake. Don't you mean forty hours? Think of
the enormous distance. Why, even then we should have to travel over
sixty miles an hour through the air."

"My dear fellow, I don't make mistakes where figures are concerned.
The paradox of aërial navigation is 'the greater the speed the less
the resistance.'

"In virtue of that paradox I am able to tell you that the speed of
the _Ariel_ in moderate weather is a hundred and twenty miles an
hour, and a hundred and twenty into two thousand two hundred goes
eighteen times and one-third. This is Wednesday, and we have to be on
the Asiatic frontier at daybreak on Friday. We shall start at dusk
to-night, and you shall see to-morrow's sun set over the Ourals."

"That means from the eastern side of the range!"

"Of course. There will be no harm in being a few hours too soon. In
case we may have a long cruise, I must have additional stores, and
power-cylinders put on board. Come, you have not seen the _Ariel_
yet.

"I have made several improvements on the model, as I expected to do
when I came to the actual building of the ship, and, what is more
important than that, I have immensely increased the motive power and
economised space and weight at the same time. In fact, I don't
despair now of two hundred miles an hour before very long. Come!"

The engineer and the enthusiast had now come to the fore again, and
the man and the lover had receded, put back, as it were, until the
time for love, or perchance for sorrow, had come.

He put his arm through Colston's, and led him up a hill-path and
through a little gorge which opened into a deep valley, completely
screened on all sides by heather-clad hills. Sprinkled about the
bottom of this valley were a few wooden dwelling-houses and
workshops, and in the centre was a huge shed, or rather an enclosure
now, for its roof had been taken off.

In this lay, like a ship in a graving-dock, a long, narrow,
grey-painted vessel almost exactly like a sea-going ship, save for
the fact that she had no funnel, and that her three masts, instead of
yards, each carried a horizontal fan-wheel, while from each of her
sides projected, level with the deck, a plane twice the width of the
deck and nearly as long as the vessel herself.

They entered the enclosure and walked round the hull. This was
seventy feet long and twelve wide amidships, and save for size it was
the exact counterpart of the model already described.

As soon as he had taken Colston round the hull, and roughly explained
its principal features, reserving more detailed description and the
inspection of the interior for the voyage, he gave the necessary
orders for preparing for a lengthy journey, and the two went on board
the _Lurline_ to dinner, which Colston had deferred in order to eat
it in Arnold's company.

After dinner they carefully discussed the situation in order that
every possible accident might be foreseen, argued the pros and cons
of the venture in all their bearings, and even went so far as to plan
the vengeance they would take should, by any chance, the rescue fail
or come too late.

The instructions, signed by Natas himself, were very precise on
certain essential points, and in their broad outlines, but, like all
wisely planned instructions to such men as these, they left ample
margin for individual initiative in case of emergency.

Some of the stores of the _Lurline_ had to be transferred to the
_Ariel_, and these were taken ashore after dinner, and at the same
time Colston made his first inspection of the interior of the
air-ship, under the guidance of her creator. What struck him most at
first sight was the apparent inadequacy of the machinery to the
attainment of the tremendous speed at which Arnold had promised they
should travel.

There were four somewhat insignificant-looking engines in all. Of
these, one drove the stern propeller, one the side propellers, and
two the fan-wheels on the masts. He learnt as soon as the voyage
began, that, by a very simple switch arrangement, the power of the
whole four engines could be concentrated on the propellers; for, once
in the air, the lifting wheels were dispensed with and lowered on
deck, and the ship was entirely sustained by the pressure of the air
under her planes.

There was not an ounce of superfluous wood or metal about the
beautifully constructed craft, but for all that she was complete in
every detail, and the accommodation she had for crew and passengers
was perfectly comfortable, and in some respects cosy in the extreme.
Forward there was a spacious cabin with berths for six men, and aft
there were separate cabins for six people, and a central saloon for
common use.

On deck there were three structures, a sort of little conning tower
forward, a wheel-house aft, and a deck saloon amidships. All these
were, of course, so constructed as to offer the least possible
resistance to the wind, or rather the current created by the vessel
herself when flying through the air at a speed greater than that of
the hurricane itself.

All were closely windowed with toughened glass, for it is hardly
necessary to say that, but for such a protection, every one who
appeared above the level of the deck would be almost instantly
suffocated, if not whirled overboard, by the rush of air when the
ship was going at full speed. Her armament consisted of four long,
slender cannon, two pointing over the bows, and two over the stem.

The crew that Arnold had chosen for the voyage consisted, curiously
enough, of men belonging to the four nationalities which would be
principally concerned in the Titanic struggle which a few weeks would
now see raging over Europe. Their names were Andrew Smith,
Englishman, and coxswain; Ivan Petrovitch, Russian; Franz Meyer,
German; and Jean Guichard, Frenchman. Diverse as they were, there
never were four better workers, or four better friends.

They had no country but the world, and no law save those which
governed their Brotherhood. They conversed in assorted but perfectly
intelligible English, for the very simple reason that Mr. Andrew
Smith consistently refused to attempt even the rudiments of any other
tongue.

While the stores were being put on board, Arnold made a careful
examination of every part of the machinery, and then of the whole
vessel, in order to assure himself that everything was in perfect
order. This done, he gave his final instructions to those of the
little community who were left behind to await the arrival of the
steamer, and as the sun sank behind the western ridges of the island,
he went on board the _Ariel_ with Colston, took his place at the
wheel, and ordered the fan-wheels to be set in motion.

Colston was standing by the open door of the wheel-house as Arnold
communicated his order to the engine-room by pressing an electric
button, one of four in a little square of mahogany in front of the
wheel.

There was no vibration or grinding, as would have been the case in
starting a steamer, but only a soft whirring, humming sound, that
rose several degrees in pitch as the engines gained speed, and the
fan-wheels revolved faster and faster until they sang in the air, and
the _Ariel_ rose without a jar or a tremor from the ground, slowly at
first, and then more and more swiftly, until Colston saw the ground
sinking rapidly beneath him, and the island growing smaller and
smaller, until it looked like a little patch on the dark grey water
of the sea.

Away to the north and west he could see the innumerable islands of
the Hebrides, while to the east the huge mountainous mass of the
mainland of Scotland loomed dark upon the horizon.

When the barometer marked eight hundred feet above the sea-level, the
_Ariel_ passed through a stratum of light clouds, and on the upper
side of this the sun was still shining, shooting his almost level
rays across it as though over some illimitable sea of white fleecy
billows, whose crests were tipped with rosy, golden light.

Above the surface of this fairy sea rose north-eastward the black
mass of Ben More on the Island of Mull, and to the southward, the
lesser peaks of Jura and Islay.

While he was still wrapped in admiration of the strange beauty of
this, to him, marvellous scene, the _Ariel_ had risen to a thousand
feet, still almost in a vertical line from the island. Arnold now
pressed another button, and the stern propeller began to revolve
swiftly and noiselessly, and Colston saw the waves of the cloud-sea
begin to slip behind, although so smooth was the working of the
machinery, and the motion of the air-ship, that, but for this, he
could hardly have guessed that he was in motion.

Arnold now turned a few spokes of the wheel, and headed the _Ariel_
due east by the compass. Then he touched a third button. The side
propellers began to turn swiftly on their axes, and, at the same time
the speed of the fan-wheels slackened, and gradually stopped.

Colston now began to feel the air rushing by him in a stream so rapid
and strong, that he had to take hold of the side of the wheel-house
doorway to steady himself.

"I think you had better come inside and shut the door," said Arnold.
"We are getting up speed now, and in a few minutes you won't be able
to hold yourself there. You'll be able to see just as well inside."

Colston did as he was bidden, and as soon as he was safely inside
Arnold pulled a lever beside the wheel, and slightly inclined the
planes from forward aft. At the same time the fan-wheels began to
slide down the masts until they rested upon the deck.

"Now, you shall see her fly," said Arnold, taking a speaking-tube
from the wall and whistling thrice into it.

Colston felt a slight tremor in the deck beneath his feet, and then a
lifting movement. He staggered a little, and said to Arnold--

"What's that? Are we going higher still?"

"Yes," replied the engineer. "She is feeling the air-planes now under
the increased speed. I am going up to fifteen hundred feet, so that
we shall only have the highest peaks to steer clear of in crossing
Scotland. Now, use your eyes, and you will see something worth
looking at."

The upper part of the wheel-house was constructed almost entirely of
glass, and so Colston could see just as well as if he had been on
deck outside. He did use his eyes. In fact, for some time to come,
all his other senses seemed to be merged in that of sight, for the
scene was one of such rare and marvellous beauty, and the sensations
that it called up were of so completely novel a nature, that, for the
time being, he felt as though he had been suddenly transported into
fairyland.

The cloud-sea now lay about seven hundred feet beneath them. The sun
had sunk quite below the horizon, even at that elevation; but his
absence was more than made up for by the nearly full moon, which had
risen to the southward, as though to greet the conqueror of the air,
and was spreading a flood of silvery radiance over the snowy plain
beneath, through the great gaps in which they could see the darker
sheen of the moving sea-waves.

Their course lay almost exactly along the fifty-sixth parallel of
latitude, and took them across Argyle, Dumbarton, and Stirlingshire
to the head of the Firth of Forth. As they approached the mainland,
Colston saw one or two peaks rise up out of the clouds, and soon they
were sweeping along in the midst of a score or so of these. To the
left Ben Lomond towered into the clear sky above his attendant peaks,
and to the right the lower summits of the Campsie Fells soon rose a
few miles ahead.

The rapidity with which these mountain-tops rose up on either side,
and were left behind, proved to Colston that the _Ariel_ must be
travelling at a tremendous speed, and yet, but for a very slight
quivering of the deck, there was no motion perceptible, so smoothly
did the air-ship glide through the elastic medium in which she
floated.

So engrossed was he with the unearthly beauty of the new world into
which he had risen, that for nearly two hours he stood without
speaking a word. Arnold, wrapped in his own thoughts, maintained a
like silence, and so they sped on amidst a stillness that was only
broken by the soft whirring of the propellers, and the singing of the
wind past the masts and stays.

At length a faint sound like the dashing of breakers on a rocky coast
roused Colston from his reverie, and he turned to Arnold and said--

"What is that? Not the sea, surely!"

"Yes, those are the waves of the Firth of Forth breaking on the
shores of Fife."

"What! Do you mean to tell me that we have crossed Scotland already?
Why, we have not been an hour on the way yet!"

"Oh yes, we have," replied the engineer. "We have been nearly two.
You have been so busy looking about you that you have not noticed how
the time has passed. We have travelled a little over two hundred and
forty miles. We are over the German Ocean now, and as there will be
no more hills until we reach the Ourals we can go down a little."

As he spoke he moved the lever beside him about an inch, and
instantly the clouds seemed to rise up toward them as the _Ariel_
swept downwards in her flight. A hundred feet above them Arnold
touched the lever again, and the air-ship at once resumed her
horizontal course.

Then he put her head a little more to the northward, and called down
the speaking tube for Andrew Smith to come and relieve him. A minute
later Smith's head appeared at the top of the companion-ladder which
led from the saloon to the wheel-house, and Arnold gave him the wheel
and the course, saying at the same time to Colston--

"Now, come down and have something to eat, and then we will have a
smoke and a chat and go to bed. There is nothing more to be seen
until the morning, and then I will show you Petersburg as it looks
from the clouds."

"If you told me you would show me the Ourals themselves, I should
believe you after what I have seen," replied Colston, as together
they descended the companion-way from the wheel-house to the saloon.

"Ah, I'm afraid that would be too much even for the _Ariel_ to
accomplish in the time," said Arnold. "Still, I think I can guarantee
that you shall cross Europe in such time as no man ever crossed it
before."




CHAPTER XI.

FIRST BLOOD.


After supper the two friends ascended to the deck saloon for a smoke,
and to continue their discussion of the tremendous events in which
they were so soon to be taking part. They found the _Ariel_ flying
through a cloudless sky over the German Ocean, whose white-crested
billows, silvered by the moonlight, were travelling towards the
north-east under the influence of the south-west breeze from which
the engineer had promised himself assistance when they started.

"We seem to be going at a most frightful speed," said Colston,
looking down at the water. "There's a strong south-west breeze
blowing, and yet those white horses seem to be travelling quite the
other way."

"Yes," replied Arnold, looking down. "This wind will be travelling
about twenty miles an hour, and that means that we are making nearly
a hundred and fifty. The German Ocean here is five hundred miles
across, and we shall cross it at this rate in about three hours and a
half, and if the wind holds over the land we shall sight Petersburg
soon after sunrise.

"The sun will rise to-morrow morning a few minutes after five by
Greenwich time, which is about two hours behind Petersburg time.
Altogether we shall make, I expect, from two to two and a half hours'
gain on time."

The two men talked until a few minutes after ten, and then went to
bed. Colston, who had been travelling all the previous night, began
to feel drowsy in spite of the excitement of the novel voyage, and
almost as soon as he lay down in his berth dropped off into a sound,
dreamless sleep, and knew nothing more until Arnold knocked at his
door and said--

"If you want to see the sun rise, you had better get up. Coffee will
be ready in a quarter of an hour."

Colston pulled back the slide which covered the large oblong pane of
toughened glass which was let into the side of his cabin and looked
out. There was just light enough in the grey dawn to enable him to
see that the _Ariel_ was passing over a sea dotted in the distance
with an immense number of islands.

"The Baltic," he said to himself as he jumped out of bed. "This is
travelling with a vengeance! Why, we must have travelled a good deal
over a thousand miles during the night. I suppose those islands will
be off the coast of Finland. If so, we are not far from Petersburg,
as the _Ariel_ seems to count distance."

The most magnificent spectacle that Colston had ever seen in his
life, or, for the matter of that, ever dreamed of, was the one that
he saw from the conning-tower of the _Ariel_ while the sun was rising
over the vast plain of mingled land and water which stretched away to
the eastward until it melted away into the haze of early morning.

The sky was perfectly clear and cloudless, save for a few light
clouds that hung about the eastern horizon, and were blazing gold and
red in the light of the newly-risen sun. The air-ship was flying at
an elevation of about two thousand feet, which appeared to be her
normal height for ordinary travelling. There was land upon both sides
of them, but in front opened a wide bay, the northern shores of which
were still fringed with ice and snow.

"That is the Gulf of Finland," said Arnold. "The winter must have
been very late this year, and that probably means that we shall find
the eastern side of the Ourals still snow-bound."

"So much the better," replied Colston. "They will have a much better
chance of escape if there is good travelling for a sleigh."

"Yes," replied Arnold, his brows contracting as he spoke. "Do you
know, if it were not for the Master's explicit orders, I should be
inclined to smash up the station at Ekaterinburg a few hours
beforehand, and then demand the release of the whole convict train,
under penalty of laying the town in ruins."

Colston shook his head, saying--

"No, no, my friend, we must have a little more diplomacy than that.
Your thirst for the life of the enemy will, no doubt, be fully
gratified later on. Besides, you must remember that you would
probably blow some hundreds of perfectly innocent people to pieces,
and very possibly a good many friends of the Cause among them."

"True," replied Arnold; "I didn't think of that; but I'll tell you
what we can do, if you like, without transgressing our instructions
or hurting any one except the soldiers of the Tsar, who, of course,
are paid to slaughter and be slaughtered, and so don't count."

"What is that?" asked Colston.

"We shall be passing over Kronstadt in a little over an hour, and we
might take the opportunity of showing his Majesty the Tsar what the
_Ariel_ can do with the strongest fortress in Europe. How would you
like to fire the first shot in the war of the Revolution?"

Colston was silent for a few moments, and then he looked up and
said--

"There is not the slightest reason why we should not take a shot at
Kronstadt, if only to give the Russians a foretaste of favours to
come. Still, I won't fire the first shot on any account, simply
because that honour belongs to you. I'll fire the second with
pleasure."

"Very good," replied Arnold. "We'll have two shots apiece, one each
as we approach the fortress, and one each as we leave it. Now come
and take a preparatory lesson in the new gunnery."

They went down into the chief saloon, and there Arnold showed Colston
a model of the new weapon with which the _Ariel_ was armed, and
thoroughly explained the working of it. After this they went to the
wheel-house, where Arnold inclined the planes at a sharper angle, and
sent the _Ariel_ flying up into the sky, until the barometer showed
an elevation of three thousand feet.

Then he signalled to the engine-room, the fan-wheels rose from the
deck, as if by their own volition, and, as soon as they reached their
places, began to spin round faster and faster, until Colston could
again hear the high-pitched singing sound that he had heard as the
_Ariel_ rose from Drumcraig Island.

At the same time the speed of the vessel rapidly decreased; the side
propellers ceased working, and the stern-screw revolved more and more
slowly, until the speed came down to about thirty miles an hour.

By this time the great fortress of Kronstadt could be distinctly seen
lying upon its island, like some huge watch-dog crouched at the
entrance to his master's house, guarding the way to St. Petersburg.

"Now," said Arnold, "we can go outside without any fear of being
blown off into space."

They went out and walked forward to the bow. Arrived there they found
two of the men, each with a curious-looking shell in his arms. The
projectiles were about two feet long and six inches in diameter, and
were, as Arnold told Colston, constructed of _papier-maché_. There
were three blades projecting from the outside, and running spirally
from the point to the butt. These fitted into grooves in the inside
of the cannon, which were really huge air-guns twenty feet long,
including the air-chamber at the breech.

The projectiles were placed in position, the breeches of the guns
closed, and a minute later the air-chambers were filled with air at a
pressure of two hundred atmospheres, pumped from the forward engines
through pipes leading up to the guns for the purpose.

"Now," said Arnold, "we're ready! Meanwhile you two can go and load
the two after guns."

The men saluted and retired, and Arnold continued--

"Just take a look down with your glasses and see if they see us. I
expect they do by this time."

Colston put his field-glass to his eyes, and looked down at the
fortress, which was now only six or seven miles ahead.

"Yes," he said, "at any rate I can see a lot of little figures
running about on the roof of one of the ramparts, which I suppose are
soldiers. What's the range of your gun? I should say the fortress is
about six miles off now."

"We can hit it from here, if you like," replied Arnold, "and if we
were a thousand feet higher I could send a shell into Petersburg.
See! there is the City of Palaces. Away yonder in the distance you
can just see the sun shining on the houses. We could see it quite
plainly if it wasn't for the haze that seems to be lying over the
Neva."

While he was speaking, Arnold trained the gun according to a scale on
a curved steel rod which passed through a screw socket in the breech
of the piece.

"Now," he said. "Watch!"

He pressed a button on the top of the breech. There was a sharp but
not very loud sound as the compressed air was released; something
rushed out of the muzzle of the gun, and a few seconds later, Colston
could see the missile boring its way through the air, and pursuing a
slanting but perfectly direct path for the centre of the fortress.

A second later it struck. He could see a bright greenish flash as it
smote the steel roof of the central fort. Then the fort seemed to
crumble up and dissolve into fragments, and a few moments later a
dull report floated up into the sky mingled, as he thought, with
screams of human agony.

For a moment he stared in silence through the glasses, then he turned
to Arnold and said in a voice that trembled with violent emotion--

"Good God, that is awful! The whole of the centre citadel is gone as
though it had been swept off the face of the earth. I can hardly see
even the ruins of it. Surely that's murder rather than war!"

"No more murder than the use of torpedoes in naval warfare, as far as
I can see," replied Arnold coolly. "Remember, too," he continued in a
sterner tone, "that fortress belongs to the power that flogged Radna
and has captured Natasha. Come, let's see what execution you can do."

He crossed the deck and set the other gun by its scale, saying as he
did so--

"Put your finger on the button and press when I tell you."

Colston did as he was bid, and as his finger touched the little knob
his hand was as firm as though he had been making a shot at
billiards.

"Now!"

He pressed the button down hard. There was the same sharp sound, and
a second messenger of destruction sped on its way towards the doomed
fortress.

[Illustration: "Good God, that is awful."

_See page 82._]

They saw it strike, and then came the flash, and after that a huge
cloud of dust mingled with flying objects that might have been blocks
of masonry, guns, or human bodies, rose into the air, and then fell
back again to the earth.

"There goes one of the angles of the fortification into the sea,"
said Arnold, as he saw the effects of the shot. "Kronstadt won't be
much good when the war breaks out, it strikes me. I suppose they'll
be replying soon with a few rifle shots. We'd better quicken up a
bit."

He went aft to the wheel-house, followed by Colston, and signalled
for the three propellers to work at their utmost speed. The order was
instantly obeyed; the fan-wheels ceased revolving, and under the
impetus of her propellers the _Ariel_ leapt forwards and upwards like
an eagle on its upward swoop, rose five hundred feet in the air, and
then swept over Kronstadt at a speed of more than a hundred miles an
hour.

As they passed over they saw a series of flashes rise from one of the
untouched portions of the fortress, but no bullets came anywhere near
them. In fact, they must have passed through the air two or three
miles astern of the flying _Ariel_. No soldier who ever carried a
rifle could have sent a bullet within a thousand yards of an object
seventy feet long travelling over a hundred miles an hour at a height
of nearly four thousand feet, and so the Russians wasted their
ammunition.

As soon as they had passed over the fortress, Arnold signalled for
the propellers to stop, and the fan-wheels to revolve again at half
speed. The air-ship stopped within three miles, and remained
suspended in air over the opening mouth of the Neva. Then the two
after guns were trained upon the fortress, and Colston and Arnold
fired them together.

The two shells struck at the same moment, one in each of two angles
of the ramparts. Their impact was followed by a tremendous explosion,
far greater than could be accounted for by the shells themselves.

"There goes one, if not two, of his powder magazines. Look! half the
fortress is a wreck. I wonder which fired the lucky shot."

The man who a year before had been an inoffensive student of
mechanics and an enthusiast dreaming of an unsolved problem, spoke of
the frightful destruction of life and the havoc that he had caused by
just pressing a button with his finger, as coolly and quietly as a
veteran officer of artillery might have spoken of shelling a fort.

There were two reasons for this almost miraculous change. One was to
be found in the bitter hatred of Russian tyranny which he had imbibed
during the last six months, and the other was the fact that the woman
for whom he would have himself died a thousand deaths if necessary,
was a captive in Russian chains, being led at that moment to slavery
and degradation.

As soon as they had seen the effects of the last two shots, Arnold
said with a grim, half-smile on his lips--

"I think it will be better if we don't show ourselves too plainly to
Petersburg. It will take some time for the news of the destruction of
Kronstadt to reach the city, and, of course, there will be the
wildest rumours as to the agency by which it was done, so we may as
well leave them to argue the matter out among themselves."

He signalled again to the engine-room, and with the united aid of her
planes and fan-wheels the _Ariel_ mounted up and up into the sky,
driven only by the stern-propeller and with the force of the other
engines concentrated on the lifting wheels, until a height of five
thousand feet was reached.

At that height she would have looked, if she could have been seen at
all, nothing more than a little grey spot against the blue of the
sky, and as they heard afterwards she passed over St. Petersburg
without being noticed.

From St. Petersburg to Tiumen, as the crow flies, the distance is
1150 English miles, and nine hours after she had passed over the
Capital of the North, the _Ariel_ had winged her way over the Ourals
and the still snow-clad forests of the eastern slopes, past the
tear-washed Pillar of Farewells, and had come to a rest after her
voyage of two thousand two hundred miles, including the delay at
Kronstadt, in twenty hours almost to the minute, as her captain had
predicted.




CHAPTER XII.

IN THE MASTER'S NAME.


The _Ariel_, in order to avoid being seen from the town, had made a
wide circuit to the northward at a considerable elevation, and as
soon as a suitable spot had been sought out by means of the
field-glasses, she dropped suddenly and swiftly from the clouds into
the depths of the dense forest through which the Tobolsk road runs
from Tiumen to the banks of the Tobol.

From Tiumen to the Tobol is about twenty-five miles by road. The
railway, which was then finished as far as Tomsk, ran to Tobolsk by a
more northerly and direct route than the road, but convicts were
still marched on foot along the great post road after the gangs had
been divided at Tiumen according to their destinations.

The spot which had been selected for the resting-place of the _Ariel_
was a little glade formed by the bend of a frozen stream about five
miles east of the town, and at a safe distance from the road.

Painted a light whitish-grey all over, she would have been invisible
even from a short distance as she lay amid the snow-laden trees, and
Arnold gave strict orders that all the window-slides were to be kept
closed, and no light shown on any account.

Every precaution possible was taken to obviate a discovery which
should seriously endanger the success of the rescue, but,
nevertheless, the fan-wheels were kept aloft, and everything was in
readiness to rise into the air at a moment's notice should any
emergency require them to do so.

It was a little after three o'clock on the Thursday afternoon when
the _Ariel_ settled down in her resting-place, and half an hour later
Colston and Ivan Petrovitch appeared on deck completely disguised,
the former as a Russian fur trader, and the latter as his servant.

All the arrangements for the rescue had been once more gone over in
every detail, and just before he swung himself over the side Colston
shook hands for the last time with Arnold, saying as he did so--

"Well, good-bye again, old fellow! Ivan shall come back and bring you
the news, if necessary; but if he doesn't come, don't be uneasy, but
possess your soul in patience till you hear the whistle from the road
in the morning. I expect the train will get in sometime during the
night, and in that case we shall have everything ready to make the
attempt soon after daybreak, if not before.

"If we can get as far as this without being pursued we shall come
right on board. If not we must trust to our horses and our pistols to
keep the Cossacks at a distance till you can help us. In any case,
rest assured that once clear of Tiumen, we shall never be taken
alive. Those are the Master's orders, and I will shoot Natasha myself
before she goes back to captivity."

"Yes, do so," replied Arnold. His lips quivered as he spoke, but
there was no tremor in the hand with which he gripped Colston's in
farewell. "She will prefer death to slavery, and I shall prefer it
for her. But if you have to do it you will at least have the
consolation of knowing that within twelve hours of your death the
Tsar shall be lying buried beneath the ruins of the Peterhof Palace.
I will have his life for hers if only I live to take it."

"I will tell her," said Colston simply, "and if die she must, she
will die content."

So saying, he descended the little rope-ladder, followed by Ivan, and
in a few moments the two were lost in the deep shadow of the trees,
while Arnold went down into the saloon to await with what patience he
might the moment that would decide the fate of the daughter of Natas
and the man who had gone, as he would so gladly have done, to risk
his life to restore her to liberty.

Rather more than half an hour's tramp through the forest brought
Colston and Ivan out on the road at a point a little less than five
miles from Tiumen.

Colston was provided with passports and permits to travel for himself
and Ivan. These, of course, were forged on genuine forms which the
Terrorists had no difficulty in obtaining through their agents in
high places, who were as implicitly trusted as the Princess Ornovski
had been but a few months before.

So skilfully were they executed, however, that it would have been a
very keen official eye that had discovered anything wrong with them.
They described him as "Stepan Bakuinin, fur merchant of Nizhni
Novgorod, travelling in pursuit of his business, with his servant,
Peter Petrovitch, also of Nizhni Novgorod."

Instead of going straight into the town by the main road they made a
considerable detour and entered it by a lane that led them through a
collection of miserable huts occupied by the poorest class of
Siberian mujiks, half peasants, half townsfolk, who cultivate their
patches of ground during the brief spring and summer, and struggle
through the long dreary winter as best they can on their scanty
savings and what work they can get to do from the Government or their
richer neighbours.

Colston had never been in Tiumen before, but Ivan had, for ten years
before he had voluntarily accompanied his father, who had been
condemned to five years' forced labour on the new railway works from
Tiumen to Tobolsk, for giving a political fugitive shelter in his
house. He had died of hard labour and hard usage, and that was one
reason why Ivan was a member of the Outer Circle of the Terrorists.

He led his master through the squalid suburb to the business part of
the town, which had considerably developed since the through line to
Tobolsk and Tomsk had been constructed, and at length they stopped
before a comfortable-looking house in the street that ends at the
railway station.

They knocked, gave their names, and were at once admitted. The
servant who opened the door to them led them to a room in which they
found a man of about fifty in the uniform of a sub-commissioner of
police. As Colston held out his hand to him he said--

"In the Master's name!"

The official took his hand, and, bending over it, replied in a low
tone--

"I am his servant. What is his will?"

"That Anna Ornovski and Fedora Darrel, the English girl who was taken
with her, be released as soon as may be," replied Colston. "Is the
train from Ekaterinburg in yet?"

"Not yet. The snow is still deep between here and the mountains. The
winter has been very severe and long. We have almost starved in
Tiumen in spite of the railway. There has been a telegram from
Ekaterinburg to say that the train descended the mountain safely, and
one from Kannishlov to say that we expect it soon after ten
to-night."

"Good! That is sooner than we expected in London. We thought it would
not reach here till to-morrow morning."

"In London! What do you mean? You cannot have come from London, for
there has been no train for two days."

"Nevertheless I have come from London. I left England yesterday
evening."

"Yesterday evening! But, with all submission, that is impossible. If
there were a railway the whole distance it could not be done."

"To the Master there is nothing impossible. Look! I received that the
evening I left London."

As he spoke, Colston held out an envelope. The Russian examined it
closely. It bore the Ludgate Hill post-mark, which was dated "March
7."

Colston's host bent over it with almost superstitious reverence, and
handed it back, saying humbly--

"Forgive my doubts, Nobleness! It is a miracle! I ask no more. The
Tsar himself could not have done it. The Master is all powerful, and
I am proud to be his servant, even to the death."

Although the twentieth century had dawned, the Siberian Russians were
still inclined to look even upon the railway as a miracle. This man,
although he occupied a post of very considerable responsibility and
authority under the Russian Government, was only a member of the
Outer Circle of the Terrorists, as most of the officials were, and
therefore he knew nothing of the existence of the _Ariel_, and
Colston purposely mystified him with the apparent miracle of his
presence in Tiumen after so short an absence from London, in order to
command his more complete obedience in the momentous work that was on
hand.

He allowed the official a few moments to absorb the full wonder of
the seeming marvel, and then he replied--

"Yes, we are all his servants _to the death_. At least I know of none
who have even thought of treason to him and lived to put their
thoughts into action. But tell me, are all the arrangements complete
as far as you can make them? Much depends upon how you carry them
out, you know, to say nothing of the two thousand roubles that I
shall hand to you as soon as the two ladies are delivered into my
charge."

"All is arranged, Nobleness," replied the official, bowing
involuntarily at the mention of the money. "Such of the prisoners,
that is to say the politicals, who can afford to pay for the
privilege, may, by the new regulations, be lodged in the houses of
approved persons during their sojourn in Tiumen, if it be only for a
night, and so escape the common prison.

"We knew at the police bureau of the arrest of the Princess Ornovski
some days ago, and I have obtained permission from the chief of
police to lodge her Highness and her companion in misfortune--if they
are prepared to pay what I shall ask. It has come to be looked upon
as a sort of perquisite of diligent officials, and as I have been
very diligent here I had no difficulty in getting the
permission--which I shall have to pay for in due course."

"Just so! Nothing for nothing in Russian official circles. Very good.
Now listen. If this escape is successfully accomplished you will be
degraded and probably punished into the bargain for letting the
prisoners slip through your fingers. But that must not happen if it
can be prevented.

"Now this has been foreseen, as everything is with the Master; and
his orders are that you shall take this passport--which you will find
in perfect order, save for the fact that the date has been slightly
altered--from me as soon as I have got the ladies safely in the
troika out on the Tobolsk road, put off the livery of the Tsar,
disguise yourself as effectually as may be, and take the first train
back to Perm and Nizhni Novgorod as Stepan Bakuinin, fur merchant.

"The servant you can leave behind on any excuse. From Novgorod you
can travel _viâ_ Moscow to Königsberg, and, if you will take my
advice, you will get out of Russia as soon as the Fates will let
you."

"It shall be done, Nobleness. But how will the disappearance of
Dmitri Soudeikin, sub-commissioner of police, be accounted for?"

"That also has been provided for. Before you go you will pin this
with a dagger to your sitting-room table."

The official took the little piece of paper which Colston held out to
him as he spoke. It read thus--

    Dmitri Soudeikin, sub-commissioner of police at Tiumen, has been
    removed for over-zeal in the service of the Tsar.

      NATAS.

Soudeikin bowed almost to the ground as the dreaded name of the
Master of the Terror met his eyes, and then he said, as he handed the
paper back--

"It is so! The Master sees all, and cares for the least of his
servants. My life shall be forfeited if the ladies are not released
as I have said."

"It probably will be," returned Colston drily. "None of us expect to
get out of this business alive if it does not succeed. Now that is
all I have to say for the present. It is for you to bring the ladies
here as your prisoners, to see us out of the town before daybreak,
and to have the troika in readiness for us on the Tobolsk road. Then
see to yourself and I will be responsible for the rest."

As it still wanted more than two hours to the expected arrival of the
train, Soudeikin had the samovar, or tea-urn, brought in, and Colston
and Ivan made a hearty meal after their five-mile walk through the
snow. Then they and their host lit their pipes, and smoked and
chatted until a distant whistle warned Soudeikin that the train was
at last approaching the station, and that it was time for him to be
on duty to receive his convict-lodgers.




CHAPTER XIII.

FOR LIFE OR DEATH.


No time had ever seemed so long to Colston as did the hour and a half
which passed after the departure of Soudeikin until his return. He
would have given anything to have accompanied him to the station, but
it would have been so very unwise to have incurred the risk of being
questioned, and perhaps obliged to show the passport that Soudeikin
was to use, that he controlled his impatience as best he could, and
let events take their course.

At length, when he had looked at his watch for the fiftieth time, and
found that it indicated nearly half-past eleven, there was a heavy
knock at the door. As it opened, Colston heard a rattle of arms and a
clinking of chains. Then there was a sound of gruff guttural voices
in the entrance-hall, and the next moment the door of the room was
thrown open, and Soudeikin walked in, followed by a young man in the
uniform of a lieutenant of the line, and after them came two
soldiers, to one of whom was handcuffed the Princess Ornovski, and to
the other Natasha.

Shocked as he was at the pitiable change that had taken place in the
appearance of the two prisoners since he had last seen them in
freedom, Colston was far too well trained in the school of conspiracy
to let the slightest sign of surprise or recognition escape him.

He and Ivan rose as the party entered, greeted Soudeikin and saluted
the officer, hardly glancing at the two pale, haggard women in their
rough grey shapeless gowns and hoods as they stood beside the men to
whom they were chained.

As the officer returned Colston's salute he turned to Soudeikin and
said civilly enough--

"I did not know you had another guest. I hope we shall not overcrowd
you."

"By no means," replied the commissioner, waving his hand toward
Colston as he spoke. "This is only my nephew, Ernst Vronski, who is
staying with me for a day or two on his way through to Nizhni
Novgorod with his furs, and that is his servant, Ivan Arkavitch. You
need not be uneasy. I have plenty of rooms, as I live almost alone,
and I have set apart one for the prisoners which I think will satisfy
you in every way. Would it please you to come and see it?"

"Yes, we will go now and get them put in safety for the night, if you
will lead the way."

As the party left the room Colston caught one swift glance from
Natasha which told him that she understood his presence in the house
fully, and he felt that, despite her miserable position, he had an
ally in her who could be depended upon.

The officer carefully examined the room which had been provided for
the two prisoners, tried the heavy shutters with which the windows
were closed, and took from Soudeikin the keys of the padlocks to the
bars which ran across them. He then directed the prisoners to be
released from their handcuffs and locked them in the room, stationing
one of the soldiers at the door and sending the other to patrol the
back of the house from which the two windows of the room looked out.

At the end of two hours the sentries were to change places, and in
two hours more they were to be relieved by a detachment from the
night patrol. This arrangement had been foreseen by Soudeikin, and it
had been settled that the rescue was to be attempted as soon as the
guard had been changed.

This would give the prisoners time to get a brief but much needed
rest after their long and miserable journey from Perm, penned up like
sheep in iron-barred cattle trucks, and it would leave the drowsiest
part of the night, from four o'clock to sunrise, for the hazardous
work in hand.

"That is a pretty girl you have there, captain," said Colston, as the
officer returned to the sitting-room. "Is she for the mines or
Sakhalin?"

"For Sakhalin by sentence, but as a matter of fact for neither, as
far as I can see."

"You mean that the Little Father will pardon her or give her a
lighter sentence, I suppose."

The officer grinned meaningly as he replied--

"_Nu vot!_ That is hardly likely. What I mean is that Captain
Kharkov, who is in command of the convict train from here, has had
instructions to convey her as comfortably as possible, and with no
more fatigue than is necessary, to Tchit, in the Trans-Baikal, and
that he is also charged with a letter from the Governor of Perm to
the Governor of Tchit.

"You know these gentlemen like to do each other a good turn when they
can, and so, putting two and two together, I should say that his
Excellency of Perm has concluded that our pretty prisoner will serve
to beguile the dulness of that Godforsaken hole in which his
Excellency of Tchit is probably dying of _ennui_. She will be more
comfortable there than at Sakhalin, and it is a lucky thing for her
that she has found favour in his Excellency's eyes."

Colston could have shot the fellow where he sat leering across the
table; but though his blood was at boiling point, he controlled
himself sufficiently to make a reply after the same fashion, and soon
after took his leave and retired for the night.

At four o'clock the guard was changed. The new officer, after taking
the keys, unlocked the door of the room in which Natasha and the
Princess were confined, and roused them up to satisfy himself that
they were still in safe keeping. It was a brutal formality, but
perfectly characteristic of Siberian officialism.

The man who had been on guard so far joined the patrol and returned
to the barracks, while the new officer made himself comfortable with
a bottle of brandy, with which Soudeikin had obligingly provided him,
in the sitting-room. It was a bitterly cold night, and he drank a
couple of glasses of it in quick succession. Ten minutes after he had
swallowed the second he rolled backwards on the couch on which he was
sitting and went fast asleep. A few moments later he had ceased to
breathe.

Then the door opened softly and Soudeikin and Colston slipped into
the room. The former shook him by the shoulder. His eyes remained
half closed, his head lolled loosely from side to side, and his arms
hung heavily downwards.

"He's gone," whispered Soudeikin; and, without another word, they set
to work to strip the uniform off the lifeless body. Then Colston
dressed himself in it and gave his own clothes to Soudeikin.

As soon as the change was effected, Colston took the keys and went to
the door at which the sentry was keeping guard. The man was already
half asleep, and blinked at him with drowsy eyes as he challenged
him. For all answer the Terrorist levelled his pistol at his head and
fired. There was a sharp crack that could hardly have been heard on
the other side of the wall, and the man tumbled down with a bullet
through his brain.

Colston stepped over the corpse, unlocked the door, and found Natasha
and the Princess already dressed in male attire as two peasant boys,
with sheepskin coats and shapkas, and wide trousers tucked into their
half boots. These disguises had been provided beforehand by
Soudeikin, and hidden in the bed in which they were to sleep.

Colston grasped their hands in silence, and the three left the room.
In the passage they found Ivan and Soudeikin, the former dressed in
the uniform of the soldier who had been on guard outside the house,
and whose half-stripped corpse was now lying buried in the snow.

"Ready?" whispered Soudeikin.

"Have you finished in there?" asked Colston, jerking his thumb
towards the sitting-room.

Soudeikin nodded in reply, and the five left the house by the back
door.

It was then after half-past four. Fortunately it was a dark cloudy
morning, and the streets of the town were utterly deserted. By ones
and twos they stole through the by-streets and lanes without meeting
a soul, until Soudeikin at length stopped at a house on the eastern
edge of the town about a mile from the Tobolsk road.

He tapped at one of the windows. The door was softly opened by an
invisible hand, and they entered and passed through a dark passage
and out into a stable-yard behind the house. Under a shed they found
a troika, or three-horse sleigh, with the horses ready harnessed, in
charge of a man dressed as a mujik.

They got in without a word, all but Soudeikin, who went to the
horses' heads, while the other man went and opened the gates of the
yard. The bells had been removed from the harness, and the horses'
feet made no sound as Soudeikin led them out through the gate. Ivan
took the reins, and Colston held out his hand from the sleigh. There
was a roll of notes in it, and as he gave it to Soudeikin he
whispered--

"Farewell! If we succeed, the Master shall know how well you have
done your part."

Soudeikin took the money with a salute and a whispered farewell, and
Ivan trotted his horses quietly down the lane and swung round into
the road at the end of it.

So far all had gone well, but the supreme moment of peril had yet to
come. A mile away down the road was the guard-house on the Tobolsk
road leading out of the town, and this had to be passed before there
was even a chance of safety.

As there was no hope of getting the sleigh past unobserved, Colston
had determined to trust to a rush when the moment came. He had given
Natasha and the Princess a magazine pistol apiece, and held a brace
in his own hands; so among them they had a hundred shots.

Ivan kept his horses at an easy trot till they were within a hundred
yards of the guard-house. Then, at a sign from Colston, he suddenly
lashed them into a gallop, and the sleigh dashed forward at a
headlong speed, swept round the curve past the guard-house, hurling
one of the sentries on guard to the earth, and away out on to the
Tobolsk road.

The next instant the notes of a bugle rang out clear and shrill just
as another sounded from the other end of the town. Colston at once
guessed what had happened. The inspector of the patrols, in going his
rounds, had called at Soudeikin's house to see if all was right, and
had discovered the tragedy that had taken place. He looked back and
saw a body of Cossacks galloping down the main street towards the
guard-house, waving their lanterns and brandishing their spears above
their heads.

"Whip up, Ivan, they will be on us in a couple of minutes!" he cried
and Ivan swung his long whip out over his horses' ears, and shouted
at them till they put their heads down and tore over the smooth snow
in gallant style.

By the time the race for life or death really began they had a good
mile start, and as they had only four more to go Ivan did not spare
his cattle, but plied whip and voice with a will till the trees
whirled past in a continuous dark line, and the sleigh seemed to fly
over the snow almost without touching it.

Still the Cossacks gained on them yard by yard, till at the end of
the fourth mile they were less than three hundred yards behind. Then
Colston leant over the back of the sleigh, and taking the best aim he
could, sent half a dozen shots among them. He saw a couple of the
flying figures reel and fall, but their comrades galloped heedlessly
over them, yelling wildly at the tops of their voices, and every
moment lessening the distance between themselves and the sleigh.

Colston fired a dozen more shots into them, and had the satisfaction
of seeing three or four of them roll into the snow. At the same time
he put a whistle to his lips, and blew a long shrill call that
sounded high and clear above the hoarse yells of the Cossacks.

Their pursuers were now within a hundred yards of them, and Natasha,
speaking for the first time since the race had begun, said--

"I think I can do something now."

As she spoke she leaned out of the sleigh sideways, and began firing
rapidly at the Cossacks. Shot after shot told either upon man or
beast, for the daughter of Natas was one of the best shots in the
Brotherhood; but before she had fired a dozen times a bright gleam of
white light shot downwards over the trees, apparently from the
clouds, full in the faces of their pursuers.

Involuntarily they reined up like one man, and their yells of fury
changed in an instant into a general cry of terror. The Cossacks are
as brave as any soldiers on earth, and they can fight any mortal foe
like the fiends that they are, but here was an enemy they had never
seen before, a strange, white, ghostly-looking thing that floated in
the clouds and glared at them with a great blazing, blinding eye,
dazzling them and making their horses plunge and rear like things
possessed.

They were not long left in doubt as to the intentions of their new
enemy. Something came rushing through the air and struck the ground
almost at the feet of their first rank. Then there was a flash of
green light, a stunning report, and men and horses were rent into
fragments and hurled into the air like dead leaves before a
hurricane.

Only three or four who had turned tail at once were left alive; and
these, without daring to look behind them, drove their spurs into
their horses' flanks and galloped back to Tiumen, half mad with
terror, to tell how a demon had come down from the skies, annihilated
their comrades, and carried the fugitives away into the clouds upon
its back.

When they reached the town it was a scene of the utmost panic.
Soldiers were galloping and running hither and thither, bugles were
sounding, and the whole population were turning out into the
snow-covered streets. On every lip there were only two
words--"Natas!" "The Terrorists!"

The death sentence on Soudeikin, the sub-commissioner of police, had
been found

Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/31324