The Big Book of Victorian Mysteries

by The Big Book of Victorian Mysteries (retail) (epub)

  Aksionov trembled with anger as he looked at his enemy. He drew his hand away, saying, “I have no wish to escape, and you have no need to kill me; you killed me long ago! As to telling of you—I may do so or not, as God shall direct.”

  Next day, when the convicts were led out to work, the convoy soldiers noticed that one or other of the prisoners emptied some earth out of his boots. The prison was searched and the tunnel found. The Governor came and questioned all the prisoners to find out who had dug the hole. They all denied any knowledge of it. Those who knew would not betray Makar Semyonich, knowing he would be flogged almost to death. At last the Governor turned to Aksionov whom he knew to be a just man, and said:

  “You are a truthful old man; tell me, before God, who dug the hole?”

  Makar Semyonich stood as if he were quite unconcerned, looking at the Governor and not so much as glancing at Aksionov. Aksionov’s lips and hands trembled, and for a long time he could not utter a word. He thought, “Why should I screen him who ruined my life? Let him pay for what I have suffered. But if I tell, they will probably flog the life out of him, and maybe I suspect him wrongly. And, after all, what good would it be to me?”

  “Well, old man,” repeated the Governor, “tell me the truth: who has been digging under the wall?”

  Aksionov glanced at Makar Semyonich, and said, “I cannot say, your honour. It is not God’s will that I should tell! Do what you like with me; I am your hands.”

  However much the Governor tried, Aksionov would say no more, and so the matter had to be left.

  That night, when Aksionov was lying on his bed and just beginning to doze, some one came quietly and sat down on his bed. He peered through the darkness and recognised Makar.

  “What more do you want of me?” asked Aksionov. “Why have you come here?”

  Makar Semyonich was silent. So Aksionov sat up and said, “What do you want? Go away, or I will call the guard!”

  Makar Semyonich bent close over Aksionov, and whispered, “Ivan Dmitrich, forgive me!”

  “What for?” asked Aksionov.

  “It was I who killed the merchant and hid the knife among your things. I meant to kill you too, but I heard a noise outside, so I hid the knife in your bag and escaped out of the window.”

  Aksionov was silent, and did not know what to say. Makar Semyonich slid off the bed-shelf and knelt upon the ground. “Ivan Dmitrich,” said he, “forgive me! For the love of God, forgive me! I will confess that it was I who killed the merchant, and you will be released and can go to your home.”

  “It is easy for you to talk,” said Aksionov, “but I have suffered for you these twenty-six years. Where could I go to now?…My wife is dead, and my children have forgotten me. I have nowhere to go…”

  Makar Semyonich did not rise, but beat his head on the floor. “Ivan Dmitrich, forgive me!” he cried. “When they flogged me with the knot it was not so hard to bear as it is to see you now…yet you had pity on me, and did not tell. For Christ’s sake forgive me, wretch that I am!” And he began to sob.

  When Aksionov heard him sobbing he, too, began to weep. “God will forgive you!” said he. “Maybe I am a hundred times worse than you.” And at these words his heart grew light, and the longing for home left him. He no longer had any desire to leave the prison, but only hoped for his last hour to come.

  In spite of what Aksionov had said, Makar Semyonich confessed his guilt. But when the order for his release came, Aksionov was already dead.

  The Moscow Theater Plot

  ALFREDO ORIANI

  If remembered today at all, the Italian author Alfredo Oriani (1852–1909) has the infamous reputation for being a leading figure in the creation of fascism toward the end of the nineteenth century. With the rise of Benito Mussolini and the Fascist party in Italy after the first World War, four warships, termed Oriani-class destroyers, were named for him when they were launched in 1936.

  Most of Oriani’s books were devoted to politics and philosophy and were banned by the Catholic Church in 1940. He also wrote fiction and poetry, but none of his books in any category appear to have been translated into English.

  Though difficult to trace, this story seems to be a translated excerpt from Il Nemico (Milan, L. Omodei Zorini, 1894). It was published in English in a volume titled Mediterranean Stories, part of The Lock and Key Library: Classic Mystery and Detective Stories edited by Julian Hawthorne (New York, The Review of Reviews Co., 1909).

  THE MOSCOW THEATER PLOT

  Alfredo Oriani

  I

  “I will begin by telling you my name. I am Prince Vladimir Gregorovitch Tevscheff.”

  “The Senator?”

  “Yes.”

  There was a slight pause before the Prince continued: “Now we know each other. I have come to make terms with you.”

  “In the name of the Inner Circle?”

  “No, in my own name.”

  “Wait. You say that we know each other; but all I know is that I have heard your name spoken a few times. And what do you know of me? Your president told me, in your presence, that I was the abandoned son of a Russian priest, a student, poor and friendless, until I made a fortune in foreign countries, cheating at cards. Have you yourself a better knowledge of me?”

  “Since the Executive Committee consented to receive you at a secret session, it must have been well-informed as to your character. I do not know the small vicissitudes of your life, but I do know enough to feel justified in entering into a compact with you. Yesterday, at a meeting of students at the house of Count Ogareff, you revealed your plan, and it was rejected.”

  “Just as it had been by the Executive Committee.”

  “What do you mean to do next?”

  “What have you come to suggest?”

  “You have need of powerful aid, to carry out your plans. I have come to offer it to you.”

  “What are your conditions?”

  “I make no conditions. I only set forth the situation. Alexander III must die as his father died. That is not merely a debt of honor that we owe to Russia, but without it the fate of Alexander II would lose all significance. To-day the Government makes a greater show of repressing the revolutionists than in the past. To submit is to recognize its omnipotence. If Alexander III perishes, faith in the invincibility of Czarism is destroyed.”

  “Then whoever kills the Czar could make himself master of all the forces of nihilism?”

  “Yes.”

  “It is not enough to kill the Czar. It is necessary that he should die with as many others as it is possible to gather around him!” The Prince examined his companion intently; they were talking with the greatest calmness; had anyone been able to overhear them, he would have thought himself in the presence of two madmen.

  “If it were a matter merely of killing the Czar,” resumed Loris, “nothing would be simpler. You might have done it yourself, since you are received at court. A man is never anything more than one man against another. But this time it is quite a different question. We must do something bigger; we must blow up an entire theater on a gala night, Czar, court, and aristocracy all at once!”

  “Impossible! Remember the attempt upon the Winter Palace!”

  “Who said that we should need to tunnel? Sixty pounds of melinite would be enough to wreck a theater, without a single soul escaping. The Czar must perish in Moscow, in the city that is sacred to Czarism. The attempt may be extremely dangerous, but not at all difficult for anyone who looks upon himself as already dead—as I do. The regicides in the past who have failed have done so because they had not really renounced their lives. If nihilistic proclamations can be placed in the Czar’s own bed-chamber, why has he not been killed by those who placed them there?”

  Loris suddenly checked himself:

  “You yourself, Prince, sometimes take part in the Czar’s councils
; the papers often cite your name among those invited to the court balls!”

  The Prince, who had been expecting this objection, replied promptly:

  “That is for my wife’s sake. She does not know that I belong to the cause.”

  “It is plain,” said Loris, “that we must come to a better understanding. Why are you taking part in the revolutionary movement? What reason have you for wanting to kill the Czar? My own reasons are easy to give; my father was condemned unjustly, and died on his way to Siberia; my mother killed herself. I was born in injustice, I have suffered every misery, I have hated all my life. That is why I want to destroy this world, which for thousands of years has strangled untold millions of men for the benefit of the few. But what is there in common between those who suffer, and you who do your share in making them suffer, selfishly spending your wealth for your own pleasure?”

  “Do you not admit that we can love the people without belonging to them?”

  “No, I do not believe in revolutions that are born of love. What is it that has made you a nihilist? In what way has the Czar injured you?”

  The Prince’s face became livid; an expression of feverish hatred distorted his features. It was evident that he had suffered deeply.

  “Your wife is young?” Loris inquired, with significant irony.

  The Prince sprang to his feet; Loris followed his example.

  “I understand,” said Loris, “it is nothing but male jealousy, in place of a noble enthusiasm! Without it you would not have espoused our cause. The love of a woman, whose vanity has been flattered by the Czar, and whom you love all the more for that reason—that is your revolution!”

  “What man are you, to read one’s secret thoughts?” exclaimed the Prince, recoiling in amazement.

  “A man who has never known what love is. Sit down again, we have much to say to each other. One cannot give oneself to a woman and a revolution, at the same time. For remember this: a revolution is like a woman to this extent, that it insists upon a man’s exclusive devotion!”

  * * *

  —

  Once in Moscow, Loris’s thoughts turned to a small Hebrew friend, Sergius Nicolaivitch Lemm, and to the girl revolutionist, Olga Petrovna, in whom he was aware that he had inspired a sentiment not far removed from love. In fact, the young woman, meeting him recently in the street, had flushed such a vivid red that a far less observant person than Loris would have been aware of her partiality. He was quite ready to avail himself of this for his own purposes.

  He called upon Olga at her home; but if she expected him to pay court to her, she was quickly disillusioned. With a directness that was almost brutal, he explained to her the purpose of his visit. Olga turned white, but Loris did not even leave her time to be afraid. He outlined his plans with a cold eloquence; yet no book in the whole range of revolutionary literature had ever had for her such a horrible fascination. She did not even try to resist it. Impressed in spite of himself by her mute surrender, Loris asked her:

  “Then you are willing to aid me?”

  “What has my will to do with it? You would crush my will, as you do that of everyone else.”

  Lemm he sought out in a neighboring village, on the road to St. Petersburg. “Sergius Nicolaivitch,” he said to him, “I am glad to see that you remember me. I need you at once. You must drive back with me to Moscow. I will explain on the way.”

  The little Hebrew was in an even more dilapidated condition than usual. Although longing for an explanation, he curbed his curiosity, and hurried away to make his preparations, while Loris waited, walking his horses up and down the street. Before night, Lemm was no longer recognizable; Loris had sent him to a big furnishing store, which effected such a transformation that, with no slight assistance from the barber, he might have passed for a model of fashionable elegance.

  Loris’s first business in Moscow was to search for an apartment, facing on the same square as the great theater. He could not obtain possession of one until the end of the week, the day on which Olga, who was to play the part of his wife, arrived from St. Petersburg by train. Loris met her at the station.

  “Do I satisfy you?” she asked him, glancing down at her new frock, which she had bought to sustain her rôle.

  “Those flowers are much too loud. No real lady would have put them on a traveling hat. Otherwise you are all right.”

  II

  The great imperial box was empty, its lights turned out. In its midst, the massive golden crown above the royal seat looked not unlike a miniature dome. Olga had not shown herself at the front of her box. A calm of inertia had come over her, after the first terror at becoming a conspirator, so that Loris had to remind her to remove her cloak, and to go forward, to avoid the appearance of trying to hide. As she obeyed, Olga felt around her waist the pressure of the coiled wire, hidden there, like a mysterious clutch tightening to suffocate her. In the darkest corner, Loris had hidden the muff, containing the dismounted pieces of the auger, and under shadow of the portière he emptied his pockets; he had managed to secrete ten tubes of melinite that the Prince had furnished. Lemm was due to arrive shortly, after the concert had begun, with ten more tubes; and during the intermission they were to return to the house together, and bring the remainder.

  The theater continued to fill up slowly. Most of the ladies appeared in the boxes in hat and walking costume; a majority of the men, on the contrary, wore the conventional evening clothes. In the orchestra, the musicians were already tuning their instruments. Suddenly the flames of gas redoubled their brilliance, and all the white and gold of that vast chamber flung back the light, while the countenances and the gay apparel of the audience, leaping, as it were, from out the shadow, seemed like the beginning of the spectacle.

  Lemm entered, ahead of time. Olga was startled by his exceeding pallor.

  “If I were a detective,” Loris told him, “I should have discovered you already!”

  Lemm, who was turning down the high coat collar, behind which he had sought to hide his face, felt that he merited the reproof; but his whole stock of courage had not sufficed to keep him from trembling while passing through the body of the theater. In the box, he recovered himself, for there were three of them.

  The music seemed to continue endlessly, reaching their ears like an indistinct murmur of water or of leaves, across the noonday brilliancy of the gaslight, evoking in their minds the rival brilliancy of snow; they thought of that other night, when at even greater risk they must stretch the connecting wire all the way to their apartment, across the public square before the theater, and under the watchful eyes of the police; and all the while, the snow would keep on falling fast and silently. And they three, hidden in the remote depths of their apartment, would await the signal from the Prince, to fling that white theater into the air of heaven, and bring it down in unimaginable ruin about the heads of that joyous throng. It was a disordered and atrocious vision, that made their brains reel in anticipation.

  It seemed an eternity before Lemm took the last tubes of melinite from under his coat, and said good-by—then the finale—the hum of departure—the anxiety of hearing the attendants lock up and pass, oblivious of the two forms crouching behind the curtains.

  At last alone, their first task was to adjust the tubes of melinite beneath the seat of the sofa. After inserting the necessary number of metal hooks, Loris asked Olga for the coil of wire concealed around her waist, and she passed it to him from beneath her cloak. He rapidly wove a network of the wire through the hooks, arranging the thirty tubes in three rows; the most delicate part of the task was to connect the wires with the explosive caps; Loris satisfied himself with establishing electric connection with the first row only. If these exploded, they would inevitably set off the other two rows. All this operation was carried out in complete silence.

  Next came the second problem, that of leading the wire from the rear
leg of the sofa, beneath the carpet, through box and corridor, all the way to the window, near which Loris had assured himself, earlier in the evening, that the drainpipe descended. Loris glanced at his watch; it was on the stroke of two. Obviously, they must hasten. Olga suggested that it would be better to pierce the drainpipe first, and drop the whole length of wire into it, and then draw back what they needed to reach the box, passing it along the wall, where the carpet was attached by almost invisible little hooks. Nothing could be easier than to place it underneath. The only difficulty would be to bring it across the corridor in front of the box; but since the metal offered a certain rigidity, they could undoubtedly, with patience, eventually work it across.

  The work finished at last, with infinite calm Loris threw himself down, closely wrapped in his fur coat, with collar raised and knees drawn up, in order to keep his feet tucked in. After twisting and turning several times, in search of a comfortable position.

  “Go to sleep,” he said to Olga.

  Yet even he found sleep no easy matter. After the accomplishment of his herculean task, his mind was agitated with a savage joy. Blunted by long years of contact with revolutionary movements, his brain saw nothing in the coming carnage save a maneuver of war. He, the unknown general, had been self-sufficient. Hannibal, upon the Alps, straining his eyes for a sight of distant Rome; Moltke, rereading in the silence of his cabinet the plan of campaign against the second Napoleonic empire, must, he thought, have shared his emotion of the present moment. Then a flood of images followed each other through his brain—the roar of the explosion, sending the theater hurtling through the air; while the entire city wailed in terror, and throughout Russia and beyond Russia, all people, roused by the tremendous news, would demand who had done it! The Czar dead! The aristocracy dead! And he alone, master of the secret, would advance from across the steppes, at the head of a host of peasants, mounted on their lean horses, not speaking to them, save in one of those curt commands that change the physiognomy of people and of things!