Page:William Le Queux - The Czar's Spy.djvu/268

250 "No," responded the wood-cutter. "We never see any woman out in these woods."

The police officer strode into the inner room, glanced around to make certain that no one was concealed there, and then returning to me asked, "Who are you?"

"That is my own affair," I answered.

The mystery of Elma's disappearance while we had slept annoyed me. She seemed to have fled from me in secret. Yet could she have received some warning that the police were in search of her? She was deaf, therefore she could not have been alarmed by the banging on the door.

"Your identity is my affair," declared the man with the fair bristly beard, an average type of the uncouth officer of police.

"Who is your chief?" I inquired, as a sudden thought occurred to me.

"Melnikoff, at Helsingfors."

"Then this is not in the district of Abo?"

"No. But what difference does it make? Who are you?"

"Gordon Gregg, British subject," I replied.

"And you are the drosky-driver from Abo," remarked the fellow, turning to Felix. "Exactly as I thought. You are the pair who bribed the nun at Kajana, and succeeded in releasing the Englishwoman. In the name of the Czar, I arrest you!"

The old wood-cutter turned pale as death. We certainly were in grave peril, for I foresaw the danger of falling into the hands of Baron Oberg,