Page:William Le Queux - The Czar's Spy.djvu/228

212 "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 travelled 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.