Enough!" said the big bearded officer with a wave of the hand. "Take him
to his cell--number 326."

Whereupon the three men who had conveyed me there bundled me down two
steep flights of damp stone steps, worn hollow by the tread of thousands
of those who had already gone down to their doom, into a corridor dimly
lit by oil-lamps--a passage into which no light of day ever penetrated.

There we were met by an evil-looking ex-convict who carried a key
suspended by a chain.

"Three-two-six!" shouted one of my guardians, whereupon the gaoler opened
a door and I was thrust into a narrow stone cell, the floor of which was
an inch deep in slime, faintly lit by a tiny aperture, heavily barred,
about ten feet above where I stood.

The door was locked behind me and I found myself alone. I was in one of
those oubliettes which at the will of my captors could be flooded!

I held my breath and glanced around. Within me arose a fierce resentment.
I had acted honestly towards my scoundrelly employers--though, be it
said, my object was one of patriotic observation--yet they had allowed me
to become the victim of the secret police who would, no doubt, obtain
great kudos, and probably a liberal _douceur_, for having unearthed "a
desperate plot against Her Majesty the Empress!"

That there was a plot was quite true--but one unsuspected by the Chief of
Police of Kazan.

My paroxysm of anger I need not here describe. Through the hours that
passed I sat upon the stone seat beside the board that served me as bed,
gazing up at the small barred window.

_Clap--clap--clap_ was the only sound that reached me--and with failing
heart I knew the noise to be that of waves of the lake beating upon the
wall within a few inches of my window, the dark waters which in due time
would no doubt rise through my uneven floor and engulf me. Big grey rats
ran about in search of fragments of food--of which there was none. I was
a "political," and my food would certainly not be plentiful.

In those awful nerve-racking hours, never knowing when I might find my
floor flooded as signal of a horrible death, I paced my cell uttering the
worst curses upon those who had employed me, and vowed that if they gave
me the grace--for their own ends--to escape I would use my utmost
endeavours to destroy them.

I did not blame the Okhrana or the Chief of Police of Kazan. They had
both acted in good faith. Yet I remembered that I was the catspaw of
Kouropatkine and of S