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Updated: June 3, 2025
"In London, at Claridge's, we met my old schoolfellow Muriel and her father a friend of Oberg's and in response to their invitation went for a cruise on their yacht, the Iris, from Southampton. Our party was a very pleasant one, and included Woodroffe and Chater, while our cruise across the Bay of Biscay and along the Portuguese coast proved most delightful.
"Yes," I said, for they were all robberies of which I had read in the newspapers a couple of years before. "Well," she said, "they were all committed by Archer or Woodroffe and his gang with accomplices ashore, of course and never once did it seem that any suspicion fell upon us.
He is still on the Continent. I believe, indeed, he has gone to Russia, where he sometimes has business." "I asked you the question, Miss Muriel, because I thought if Mr. Woodroffe were here, he might object to our searching in company," I explained, smiling.
She touched her red lips with the tip of her forefinger, opened her hands, and shrugged her shoulders with a sad gesture of regret. Then turning quickly to some paper on the little table at her side she wrote something with a gold pencil and handed to me. It read "Surely Providence has sent you here! Mr. Woodroffe must have followed you from England. He is my enemy.
Of course she told me nothing of her own feelings or affections, yet I recognized in both her words and her bearing a curious apathy a want of the real enthusiasm of affection. Woodroffe, much her senior, was her father's friend, and it therefore seemed to me more than likely that Leithcourt was pressing a matrimonial alliance upon his daughter for some ulterior motive.
Leithcourt, who perhaps thought I was courting his daughter, was ever endeavoring to avoid me, and would never allow me to walk with him alone. Why? I wondered. Did he fear me? Had Woodroffe told him of our strange encounter in Leghorn? His pronounced antipathy towards me caused me to watch him surreptitiously, and more closely than perhaps I should otherwise have done.
In this affair, Olinto, our interests are mutual, are they not?" He nodded, after a moment's hesitation. "And you know also a man named Archer who is sometimes known as Hornby, or Woodroffe as well as a friend of his called Chater." "Si, signore," he said. "I have met them all to my regret." "And have you ever met a Russian a certain Baron Oberg and his niece, Elma Heath?" "His niece?
Surely the less the police know about this matter the better, otherwise the Signorina Leithcourt must suffer for her father's avarice and evil-doing." "Yes," cried Jack anxiously. "That's right, Olinto. The police must know nothing. The reprisals we must make ourselves. But who was it who shot me in Suffolk Street?" "The same man, Martin Woodroffe." "Then the assassin is back from Russia?"
"We should both be arrested at the frontier. It would be best to go into hiding here in Petersburg. I believed Woodroffe to be my friend, but I have found only this day that he is my enemy. He knew that I was in Kajana, and was in Abo when he learned of my escape. He went with two other men in search of us, and discovered us that night when we sought shelter at the wood-cutter's hut.
I knew that the district was on the opposite side of the city, close to the Little Neva. "Take a drosky at once, see her, and await a reply. In the meantime, I will prepare to be ready when you return," she wrote. "If Olga is not at home, ask to see the Red Priest in Russian, 'Krasny-pastor. Return quickly, as I fear Woodroffe may come back. If so, I am lost."
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