“I am prepared to risk that,” I said, smiling; at the same time my hand instinctively sought my hip-pocket to ascertain that my weapon was safe.  “I wish to see Miss Elma Heath.”

The old nun nodded, fumbling with her lantern.  I glanced at my watch and found that it was already two o’clock in the morning.

“Remember that if you are discovered here you exonerate me of all blame?” she said, raising her head and peering into my face with her keen gray eyes.  “By admitting you I am betraying my trust, and that I should not have done were it not compulsory.”

“Compulsory!  How?”

“The order of the Chief of Police.  Even here, we cannot afford to offend him.”

So the fellow Boranski had really kept faith with me, and at his order the closed door of the convent had been opened.

“Of course not,” I answered.  “Russian officialdom is all-powerful in Finland nowadays.  But where is the lady?”

“You are still prepared to risk your liberty and life?” she asked in a hoarse voice, full of grim meaning.

“I am,” I said.  “Lead me to her.”

“And when you see her you will make no effort to speak with her?  Promise me that.”

“Ah, Sister!” I cried.  “You are asking too great a sacrifice of me.  I come here from England, nay, from Italy in search of her, to question her regarding a strange mystery and to learn the truth.  Surely I may be permitted to speak with her?”

“You wish to learn the truth, sir!” remarked the woman.  “I thought you were her lover—­that you merely wished to see her once again.”

“No, I am not her lover,” I answered.  “Indeed, we have never yet met.  But I am in search of the truth from her own lips.”

“That you will never learn,” she said, in a hard, changed voice.

“Because there is a conspiracy to preserve the secret!” I cried.  “But I intend to solve the mystery, and for that reason I have traveled here from England.”

The woman with the lantern smiled sadly, as though amused by my impetuosity.

“You are on Russian soil now, m’sieur, not English,” she remarked in her broken English.  “If your object were known, you would never be spared to return to your own land.  Ah!” she sighed, “you do not know the mysteries and terrors of Finland.  I am a French subject, born in Tours, and brought to Helsingfors when I was fifteen.  I have been in Finland forty-five years.  Once we were happy here, but since the Czar appointed Baron Oberg to be Governor-General——­” and she shrugged her shoulders without finishing her sentence.

“Baron Oberg—­Governor-General of Finland!” I gasped.

“Certainly.  Did you not know?” she said, dropping into French.  “It is four years now that he has held supreme power to crush and Russify these poor Finns.  Ah, m’sieur! this country, once so prosperous, is a blot upon the face of Europe.  His methods are the worst and most unscrupulous of any employed by Russia.  Before he came here he was the best hated man in Petersburg, and that, they say, is why the Emperor sent him to us.”