“The American Ambassador, Kate, cannot move to release either an Englishman or a Russian.”
“I’d do it somehow. I wouldn’t sit here like a stick or a stone, writing letters to my architect.”
“That is an excellent idea, Kate. I advise you to go north by to-night’s train, if you like, and see him, or telegraph to him to come and see us.”
Kate sat down, and Dorothy drew the curtains across the window pane and snapped on the central cluster of electric lamps.
“Will you come with me if I go north?” asked Kate, in a milder tone than she had hitherto used.
“I cannot. I am making an appointment with a man in this room to-morrow.”
“The architect, I suppose,” cried Kate with scorn.
“No, with a man who may or may not give me information of Lamont or Drummond.”
“I have been trying, but it is difficult to know what to do. I have received information that the house in which Mr. Lamont and Mr. Drummond lived is now deserted, and no one knows anything of its former occupants. That information comes to me semi-officially, but it does not lead far. I have started inquiry through more questionable channels; in other words, I have invoked the aid of a Nihilist society, and although I am quite determined to go to Russia with you, do not be surprised if I am arrested the moment I set foot in St. Petersburg.”
“I was anxious to get some good news to give you, but it has not come yet.”
“Oh, Dorothy,” moaned Katherine, struggling to keep back the tears that would flow in spite of her. Dorothy patted her on the shoulder.
“You have been a little unjust,” she said, “and I am going to prove that to you, so that in trying to make amends you may perhaps stop brooding over this crisis that faces two poor lone women. You wrong the Englishman, as you call him. Jack was arrested at least two days before he was. Nihilist spies say that both of them were arrested, the Prince first, and the Englishman several days later. I had a letter from Mr. Drummond a short time after you received yours from Mr. Lamont. I never showed it to you, but now things are so bad that they cannot be worse, and you are at liberty to read the letter if you wish to do so. It tells of Jack’s disappearance, and of Drummond’s agony of mind and helplessness in St. Petersburg. Since he has never written again, I am sure he was arrested later. I don’t know which of the two was most at fault for what you call stubbornness, but I believe the explosion had more to do with the arrests than any action of theirs.”