The Intriguers

More than one of her admirers noted that La Belle Quéro was not in her best form to-night. Her acting lacked its usual spontaneity, and several times she sang flat.

Needless to say that Nada was very much alarmed by the threat which her brother had flung at her when she spoke of leaving the Palace. She tried to reason herself into the belie...

Nello stood facing the big and fashionable audience. A celebrated accompanist was already seated at the piano. There was perfect silence in the vast assembly. In a few seconds t...

But Golitzine was not at his house. Corsini exchanged a few words with the Countess, who informed him that her husband was at the Winter Palace, closeted with the Emperor on imp...

The scene was Dean Street, Soho, and this story opens on a snowy winter night in the January of 1888. The modern improvements of Shaftesbury Avenue were as yet unmade, and the f...

Corsini quitted the cabinet shortly after the departure of the Emperor. Alexander, full of his great idea, and it was proved later on that it was a very excellent and ingenious...

Peter the valet was a man of criminal instincts, cunning, avaricious, and unscrupulous. Perhaps his sole remaining qualities were his devotion to his master, Zouroff, and his ar...

Zouroff shook his fist at the retreating carriage. He looked, and felt, like a demon. Why had this fool taken this particular moment to go off his head? He knew that Stepan had...

"Sit you down there, my young friend, while I talk to you. Now, these translations are very good, and they have started an idea in my mind which might result in something useful...

Zouroff had exulted very greatly on that night when he had said good-bye to Corsini at the doors of the Palace. The carriage was waiting a short distance away. In a few hours th...

Five men were seated in the private cabinet of the Czar--the Emperor himself, his diligent and faithful Secretary, Golitzine, General Beilski, the Head of the Police, General Bu...

The relations between the handsome singer and the new Director, so pleasantly established on the night of the Countess Golitzine's concert, progressed very smoothly. La Belle Qu...

The great financier always travelled in royal state on important occasions. He lodged himself in the same fashion. At the present moment he was occupying one of the most expensi...

A month had elapsed since the funeral of the good old Papa, and the note addressed to the Baron Salmoros was still in Corsini's keeping. He knew from a postscript in Péron's let...

The next morning Corsini presented himself at the palatial premises in Old Broad Street where the Baron evolved his vast financial schemes. After he had waited in an anteroom fo...

Weary and worn with his long journey, Nello dismounted at the little wayside station about thirty miles from St. Petersburg. All passengers were peremptorily ordered to alight....

It was exceedingly difficult for a person of Nada's frank and open temperament to resort to the arts of the dissembler, to feign a cordiality she did not feel. Still, she manage...

Zouroff, at this particular moment, was not in a very enviable frame of mind. Optimist as he was, and a believer in his own star, he could not disguise from himself the fact tha...

"My friend, first of all, you are no longer an outlaw," cried Corsini cheerfully as he cast his glance round the dingy room. "The Emperor himself has graciously accorded a full...

"Inez, you are very unreasonable. Why have you dragged me here at this time of night? If your note had not said 'very urgent,' I should not have taken myself away from more impo...

After having delivered her letter in the way recorded in a previous chapter, Katerina had sped away with the swiftness of the proverbial arrow. She was well on her way home befo...

Nello was to play to-night in his private capacity of violinist, his fame having already spread abroad through the good offices of the Count. As soon as he took up his office as...

His heart heavy with grief at the loss of his kind old friend, who had been to him and his sister a second father, Nello Corsini faced again a fastidious and critical audience i...

"Now, Signor, we want to get at the bottom of this." It was the Count who was speaking. Beilski was a devoted adherent of the Czar, and had been promoted to his high post throug...

The old Frenchman had heard Corsini's knock at the door. He stood at the entrance to his shabby sitting-room, the only article of furniture being the piano, his kind old lined f...

In the private room of Count Golitzine, the Czar's private secretary, sat two men--the Count himself and Lord Ickfold, the British Ambassador. The apartment was in a secluded wi...

He was a tall, handsome man, this musical director of the opera who, twenty-five years ago, had played in a small orchestra for a few shillings a week. His countenance was flori...