Evidently both had been drugged.

The two men stood waiting for the sign of departure from the Prince.

And, in that moment, a flash of inspiration came to Corsini.

He spread out his arms and burst into a chuckling sort of laugh, like
one demented. He sprang on the box, seized the reins, and whipped up
the horses. He was well out of sight before the Prince and his two
ruffians could recover from their consternation at the unexpected turn
of affairs.

Had Stepan suddenly gone out of his sense? was the Prince's first
thought.

CHAPTER XXIII

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 suffered from a weak
intellect for many years, but he was not prepared for this sudden
ebullition of insanity.

"We cannot catch him up, your Excellency, he has driven like the
wind," remarked one of the two burly men who were in attendance on the
Prince.

"Let him drive to the devil," snarled Zouroff, in his most vicious
tone. He was really trying to mask his alarm under an assumption of
indifference. "What harm can the idiot do? He cannot hear, he can only
make guttural, and unintelligible sounds when he attempts to speak."

"He can write, your Excellency. Do not forget that. Say that at the
moment he has gone crazy. That carriage will halt somewhere in St.
Petersburg, or the environs, the police will be on the spot, inquiries
will be made. If he cannot speak, they will make him write."

But Zouroff by now had recovered his incurable optimism. "He will
recover his senses shortly and drive back to the Palace for
instructions. We will wait up for him."

The two men were not quite so convinced, although they did not dare
openly to dispute their employer's opinion. They were not quite sure
of Stepan's sudden attack of insanity. There was more in this than met
the eye.

Corsini, intensely agitated by the novelty of the unexpected
situation, drove recklessly for the first few moments, anxious to put
as much space as possible between Zouroff and himself, striving to
collect his thoughts.

As he had sat silent by the side of the Prince on their progress from
the villa to the Palace, he had thought well over the only plan of
campaign that seemed open to him. At the first stopping-place on that
long journey to the gloomy Castle of Tchernoff, he would alight, go to
the nearest police station