Page:William Le Queux - The Czar's Spy.djvu/241

Rh "No, I am a Russian subject. I was born in Russia, and went to England when I was a girl."

That altered the case entirely. As a subject of the Czar in her own country she was amenable to that disgraceful blot upon civilization that allows a person to be consigned to prison at the will of a high official, without trial or without being afforded any opportunity of appeal. I therefore at once saw a difficulty.

Yet she promised to tell me the truth if I could but secure her release!

A flood of recollections of the amazing mystery swept through my mind. A thousand questions arose within me, all of which I desired to ask her, but there, in that noisome prison-house, it was impossible. As I stood there a woman's shrill scream of excruciating pain reached me, notwithstanding those cyclopean walls. Some unfortunate prisoner was, perhaps, being tortured and confession wrung from her lips. I shuddered at the unspeakable horrors of that grim fortress.

Could I allow this refined defenceless girl to remain an inmate of that Bastille, the terrors of which I had heard men in Russia hint at with bated breath? She had been wilfully maimed and deprived of both hearing and the power of speech, and now it was intended that she should be driven mad by that silence and loneliness that must always end in insanity.

"I have decided," I said suddenly, turning to the woman who had conducted me there, and having now removed the steel bonds of the prisoner with a