Vassili nodded, and suddenly launched into detail.

“Prince Pavlo Alexis,” he said, “is a young man who takes a full and daring advantage of his peculiar position.  He defies many laws in a quiet, persistent way which impresses the smaller authorities and to a certain extent paralyzes them.  He was in the Charity League—­deeply implicated.  He had a narrow escape.  He was pulled through by the cleverest man in Russia.”

“Karl Steinmetz?”

“Yes,” answered Vassili behind the rigid smile; “Karl Steinmetz.”

“And that,” said De Chauxville, watching the face of his companion, “is all you can tell me?”

“To be quite frank with you,” replied the man who had never been quite frank in his life, “that is all I want to tell you.”

De Chauxville lighted a cigarette, with exaggerated interest in the match.

“Paul is a friend of mine,” he said calmly.  “I may be staying at Osterno with him.”

The rigid smile never relaxed.

“Not with Karl Steinmetz on the premises,” said Vassili imperturbably.

“The astute Mr. Steinmetz may be removed to some other sphere of usefulness.  There is a new spoke in his Teutonic wheel.”

“Ah!”

“Prince Paul is about to marry—­the widow of Sydney Bamborough.”

“Sydney Bamborough,” repeated Vassili musingly, with a perfect expression of innocence on his well-cut face.  “I have heard that name before.”

De Chauxville laughed quietly, as if in appreciation of a pretty trick which he knew as well as its performer.

“She is a friend of mine.”

The attache, as he was pleased to call himself, to the Russian Embassy, leant his arms on the table, bending forward and bringing his large, fleshy face within a few inches of De Chauxville’s keen countenance.

“That makes all the difference,” he said.

“I thought it would,” answered De Chauxville, meeting the steady gaze firmly.

CHAPTER XV

IN A WINTER CITY

St. Petersburg under snow is the most picturesque city in the world.  The town is at its best when a high wind has come from the north to blow all the snow from the cupola of St. Isaac’s, leaving that golden dome, in all its brilliancy, to gleam and flash over the whitened sepulchre of a city.

In winter the Neva is a broad, silent thoroughfare between the Vassili Ostrow and the Admiralty Gardens.  In the winter the pestilential rattle of the cobble-stones in the side streets is at last silent, and the merry music of sleigh-bells takes its place.  In the winter the depressing damp of this northern Venice is crystallized and harmless.

On the English Quay a tall, narrow house stands looking glumly across the river.  It is a suspected house, and watched; for here dwelt Stepan Lanovitch, secretary and organizer of the Charity League.