Argosy, Vol. 1 (December 9, 1882) — page 139: what you’re looking at

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

THE BROTHERHOOD OF SILENCE.* BY FREDERIC VAN RENSSELAER DEY. A story of Russia and the Nihilists—The mighty power wielded by an American in the dominions of the Czar and the forces that were combined for his over- throw— Withstanding an emperor to his face. SYNOPSIS OF CHAPTERS PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED. DANIEL DERRINGTON, detective from New York, goes to Russia and enters the service of the Czar as one of the Brotherhood of Silence, an association founded by Peter the Great, but whose membership has dwindled until now it consists only of the Czar, Alexis Saberevski, who was the means of bringing Derrington to Russia, and Prince Michael Zabriski, an intimate of the Czar. While the prince and Derrington are chatting in an apartment of the palace, after an audience with the emperor, the New Yorker detects a spy in the person of a servant, Jean Moret, whom he hopes to find useful, and sends to prison in St. Petersburg. The prince takes Derrington to call on a famous Russian beauty, the Princess Olga de Eche- veria, to whom he is introduced under the name of Dubravnik. While in the conservatory he overhears her conversing with a man she calls Ivan, and the name of Jean Moret is mentioned. When the princess discovers that he has overheard, she requests that he will not speak of what he knows until the next day, and will come to see her at noon. On his way home Derrington is shot at,but makes a marvelous escape, and the next day keeps his appointment with the princess. She shows him a note from the man Ivan, her brother, which reads: Our interview in the garden was overheard by two persons. One of them fortunately was a friend; the other must not keep the engagement made with you. She tella him that her brother was sentenfed to Siberia when he was sixteen, but escaped and is thought to be dead. She adds that that note means that for Derrington there is no escape ; the Nihilists will kill him when he leaves her house. In reply Derrington informa the pritcess that she must leave Russia. He is about to take his departure when she bars the way, imploring him to take the oath of the Nihilists in order that she may so inform her friends and thus spare his life. On his refusal she asks him to sit down again while she relates the circumstances that have made her a Nihilist, and when he complies she begins by asking him to imagine that he is a young Russian of noble birth whose sister has been torn from her home by order of the Czar and sent to Siberia without just cause and under the most degrading conditions. He (the brother) has sought her out, and‘ finding her out of her mind from her niisery has killed her with his own hand. Then, so altered in appearance by the horrors he had under- gone that even his fiancée does not know him, he returns to Russia, intent on two things: to kill both the Czar and the man who had placed in his sister's room the articles which had been the cause of her tndoing. This man, however, is away and the brother obtains an interview with the Czar, charges him with his crime under cover of his pistol, and then, with the weapon | almost in the imperial face, pulls the trigger. CHAPTER X.—LOVE, HONOR, AND OBEY. "THE princess paused and lowered her head until it almost touched me. I waited, wondering how it could be that the Czar still lived, for with death so near, within a few inches of his face, what could have saved him! “Hush!” she whispered. “ The end is not yet—not quite yet. You This story began in the October issue of THE ARGOSY. The two back numbers will be mailed fo any address on receipt of 20 cents. GOH GoOOO ‘SS (GO) i