Adventure, December 1914 — page 81: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

The Lancing of the Whale back. She wrote another message and sent six more gallopers careering through the night; and this time each bore a little map that showed the line of Dick’s probable retreat. The infantry were told, instead of following the guns, to climb into the foot- hills—hunt for Dick’s trail—and lie on it in ambush. She had loved him with all her wanton might that morning; tonight, Hell raged in her, and her hate of him was some- thing to be cultivated—nursed—and shielded. Feverish hands, she knew, were laboring at the wires that had been cut. Within an hour from midnight she expected to be in touch again with Petersburg and the secret, swift-pulsing heart of half the world’s treachery. The Okhrana, then, would have to know what the outcome was of the plan to use Dick Anthony. The thought was disquieting. She had failed a time or two before, and so on this occasion they had warned her to succeed, or else be relegated to the fate that waited on her failure. Even then she would be envied by the world that reads, but does not know. There was a marriage waiting for her, and a word from the Czar of all the Russias would be enough to make her the legal prop- erty of a man the thought of whose boorish- ness and gilded gluttony brought shudders from her more than a thousand miles away. She must win! Death—any kind of death— would be better a million times than life on that man’s Siberian estates. But that thought brought others, and it seemed to her she had won! From the first the plan had been to make Dick Anthony an outlaw, so that Russia—or rather the Okhrana, that is Russia’s bane—might have excuse for bringing down more troops to Persia. Were two defeats within a week— two routs—the bursting: open of a Russian jail, and release of a prisoner—the looting of Russian stores and ammunition not enough? What great power in the world would stand that much without striking a blow back? What more excuse was wanted for the in- vasion of Persia by an army corps? She began to see, now, that her vengeance on Dick Anthony might be accomplished better while at the same time making her own position doubly strong with the Okh- rana. No doubt her masters would have grown suspicious. No doubt some tele- grams had gone from discontented army- men complaining of her policy, that until now had presaged nothing but disaster; 79 no doubt there must have been somebody with brains enough to see through her former regard for Dick. And it was known in Russia that sheoved him, for once she had been unwise enough to demand him for herself as the price of her services! It was good, she told herself, that the wires were down, and that the first message to flash along them when they were repaired could be one from her, claiming to herself full credit for the situation! She would wire them to start their army on the march southward! She would claim that she had deliberately sacrificed a regiment or two, in order to have ground enough for action! And, to allay suspicion, she would let them know now that she hated Dick—she would demand, instead of his life, his torture in her presence should he happen to be caught alive. In the secret code, whose key was memorized by not more than a dozen peo- ple, she began composing messages that would be short enough but would carry sufficient emphasis; and presently she de- scended the brick steps of the tower, hum- ming to herself. Through the dark, stifling streets she ran swiftly, though entirely unafraid, to a palace that had been assigned to her for quarters, before she and the military came to logger- heads. There, in a strong-box that was screwed to a heavy table, there were papers that contained the whole Russian deposi- tions as well as a chart of Persia’s weakness- es. Marked in red, on a one-inch-scale map, were the stations where large sec- tions of an army-corps were camped in readi- ness; above the curved course of the Atrak River there were dotted red lines that rep- resented routes, and there were figures that showed the number of men in each place. Letters of the alphabet denoted infantry, artillery, or guns. Other figures, close to the dotted lines, told how many days the troops in each station might require to reach the Atrak River. The particulars were not such as are printed on the standard maps; they represented Russia’s way of keeping faith—the facts—the full of her intention to observe a promise and Persia’s integrity. 7 She opened the box now and chuckled as she drew her finger over the map, sweep- ing every other minute at the moths that fluttered against the lamp or fell singed on her secret papers. Suddenly she slipped the map back into its envelope (that was DOOK C©