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Updated: May 26, 2025
"You say that you were commanded to wake me up for this?" "Those are my orders." "Zaniloff must have lost his wits there was nothing else?" The man took one stride forward. "Yes," he cried in a low voice, "there was this, excellency." Alban slept no better than his friend; in truth he hardly closed his eyes until they waked him and told him of the tragedy.
When they had gone another hundred paces, the need for the presence of the soldiers declared itself in a heap of blackened ruins and a great fire still smouldering. Zaniloff smiled grimly when they passed the place. "Half an hour ago that was the palace of my namesake, the Grand Duke Sergius," he said, almost as though the intelligence were a matter of personal satisfaction to him.
Zaniloff could make nothing of it. The cool effrontery of this mere stripling was unlike anything he had heard at the bureau in all the years he had served authority. Why, the bravest men had gone down on their knees to him before now and almost shrieked for mercy.
These latter looked up when the door opened, but the doctors took no notice whatever. There was an overpowering odor of anaesthetics in the room although the windows had been thrown wide open. "Is the Count dead?" Alban asked them in a low voice. He had taken a few steps toward the bed and there halted irresolute. "What is it, what has happened, sir?" he continued, turning to Zaniloff.
"They are fools to make war upon bricks and mortar," Zaniloff remarked in his old quiet way. "I told them so in London, sir." "You told them; do you enjoy the honor of their acquaintance then?" "I know as much about them as any of your people, and that is saying a good deal. They are very ignorant men who are suffering great wrongs.
His grand constitution had meant very much to him to-day. The interview took place at three o'clock in the afternoon, the doctors having left their patient, and the perplexed Zaniloff being again at the prison. The bed had now been wheeled a little way from the window and the room set in pleasant order by clever and willing hands. The Count himself had lost none of his courage.
If your government would make an effort to learn what the world is thinking about to-day, you would soon end all this. But you will never do it by the whip, and guns will not help you." Zaniloff laid a hand upon his shoulder almost in a kindly way. "My honor alone forbids me to believe that," he exclaimed.
Zaniloff, charged with the command to restore order in the city at any cost, cared not a straw what the world without might say of him. The rifle, the bayonet, the revolver, the whip here were fine tools and proved. Let but a breath of suspicion frost the burnish of a reputation and he would have that man or woman at the bar, though arrest might cost a hundred lives.
The distressed Zaniloff himself carried the amazing news, some two hours later. "You are to leave for London by the evening mail," the Chief said shortly, "a berth has been reserved for you, and I myself will see you into the train. Do not complain of us, Mr. Kennedy. I can assure you that there are many cities more agreeable than Warsaw at the present moment."
When they had need of anything, they spoke to the Herr Director of the hotel who passed on his commands in a sharp decisive tone to a porter who stood at his heels. Near by him stood the Chief of the Police, Zaniloff, a short burly man who wore a dark green uniform and held his sheathed sword lightly in his left hand.
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