United States or Cuba ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Our armies were advancing, and the combined German and Austrian forces were daily being entrapped into the marshes or forced back. Even Rasputin realised the seriousness of the position, and more than once referred to it. Early one morning, before I was up, Hardt, the secret messenger from Berlin, arrived.
He gently scraped the moss from the inscription and found that he had stumbled on the long-forgotten tomb of Captain van Hardt, and underneath the hero's name he found a coat-of-arms, half obliterated yet still recognizable. It showed three fleurs de lis and a four-leaved shamrock.
Yet we had not been back at the Gorokhovaya an hour when the man Chevitch called, and at the monk's orders I handed him the balance of his blood-money. That same evening Hardt, the secret messenger from Berlin, arrived, having travelled by way of Abö, in Finland.
Slowly the rollings died away. Then a voice boomed through a speaker overhead, and despite his suspicions Thorn felt a queer surprise. It was a human voice, a man's voice, full of a horrible amusement. "Thorn Hardt! Thorn Hardt! Where are you?" Thorn did not move or reply. "If I haff not killed you, you hear me," the voice chuckled. "Come to see me, Thorn Hardt.
"Alix pretends to be most gracious to him, yet she is distinctly antagonistic, more from fear than anything else. To-day he is a favourite at Court, to-morrow " And Grichka made a wide sweep with his dirty knotted hand without concluding his sentence. "Has Her Majesty spoken to you concerning her fears that Stolypin has discovered something?" asked the man Hardt eagerly.
"Thorn Hardt, you will explain it!" "They hope," said Thorn grimly, "your fleet can make gaps in the dome to shoot through. If so, they'll go out through those gaps and fight." "Foolish!" said Kreynborg blandly. "Der only weapon we haff to use is der normal metabolism of der human system. Hunger!" Thorn reached into his pocket. Kreynborg was regarding the screen absorbedly.
I hear all you say, an' I see him troo der crack here, an' he stant out there a long time looking back in here. So I half to wait an' you go nappin' an' I still wait. I wait to say, hurry, but don't go oop nor down der creek trail. I do anything for Miss Shirley, an' I like you for takin' care off her goot name; goot names iss hardt to get back if dey gets avay. Hurry."
Then came the final dramatic coup. Of its exact details I have no knowledge. I give as I have given all through this narrative of fact only what I know to be actual truth. On December 29th, at eleven o'clock, I left the palace to take a message to Protopopoff, and to interview the much-travelled Hardt, who was coming to Petrograd from Stockholm with his usual fortnightly dispatch from Berlin.
In a few seconds we slipped our moorings, and jib, foresail, and gaff-topsail were hauled out to the wind, and the main tack dropped, sooner than I have written it. "Vare de skepp go?" I heard the artist exclaim to the boatman; "det blăser hărdt de vind blow hard moin Gud! vare de skepp go?"
"My discoveries are several, and of an interesting nature. First, a person named Hardt, who is often resident in Petrograd, is the secret courier of the Empress between Potsdam and Tsarskoe-Selo. Secondly, a sum of one hundred thousand marks was paid by the Dresdner Bank on March 11th last to the account of one Boris Stürmer, who has an account in Riga at the Disconto Gesellschaft.
Word Of The Day