“Needless to tell you,” he observed, “the antecedents of the—­princess.”

“Quite needless.”

“Married seven years ago to Charles Sydney Bamborough,” promptly giving the unnecessary information which was not wanted.

De Chauxville nodded.

“Where is Sydney Bamborough?” asked Vassili, with his mask-like smile.

“Dead,” replied the other quietly.

“Prove it.”

De Chauxville looked up sharply.  The cigarette dropped from his fingers to the floor.  His face was yellow and drawn, with a singular tremble of the lips, which were twisted to one side.

“Good God!” he whispered hoarsely.

There was only one thought in his mind—­a sudden wild desire to rise up and stand by Etta against the whole world.  Verily we cannot tell what love may make of us, whither it may lead us.  We only know that it never leaves us as it found us.

Then, leaning quietly against the stove, Vassili stated his case.

“Rather more than a year ago,” he said, “I received an offer of the papers connected with a great scheme in this country.  After certain enquiries had been made I accepted the offer.  I paid a fabulous price for the papers.  They were brought to me by a lady wearing a thick veil—­a lady I had never seen before.  I asked no questions, and paid her the money.  It subsequently transpired that the papers had been stolen, as you perhaps know, from the house of Count Stepan Lanovitch—­the house to which you happen to be going—­at Thors.  Well, that is all ancient history.  It is to be supposed that the papers were stolen by Sydney Bamborough, who brought them here—­probably to this hotel, where his wife was staying.  He handed her the papers, and she conveyed them to me in Paris.  But before she reached Petersburg they would have been missed by Stepan Lanovitch, who would naturally suspect the man who had been staying in his house, Bamborough—­a man with a doubtful reputation in the diplomatic world, a professed doer of dirty jobs.  Foreseeing this, and knowing that the League was a big thing, with a few violent members on its books, Sydney Bamborough did not attempt to leave Russia by the western route.  He probably decided to go through Nijni, down the Volga, across the Caspian, and so on to Persia and India.  You follow me?”

“Perfectly!” answered De Chauxville coldly.

“I have been here a week,” went on the Russian spy, “making enquiries.  I have worked the whole affair out, link by link, till the evening when the husband and wife parted.  She went west with the papers.  Where did he go?”

De Chauxville picked up the cigarette, looked at it curiously, as at a relic—­the relic of the moment of strongest emotion through which he had ever passed—­and threw it into the ash-tray.  He did not speak, and after a moment Vassili went on, stating his case with lawyer-like clearness.