few moments was beyond the
zone, as it were, of alarm and confusion. A sleigh came towards him. The
driver was half asleep, and looked about him with a placid, stupid face.
Here was a man who had heard nothing.

Cartoner called him, and did not wait for him to descend to unhook the
heavy leather apron.

"The telegraph office," he said.

And when the driver had settled down to his usual breakneck speed, he
urged him to go faster. The passers on the pavement were going about
their ordinary business now, bent on paying Sunday calls or taking
Sunday exercise. None knew yet what had taken place a few hundred yards
away.

Cartoner sat with clenched teeth and thought. He had a strong grasp over
his own emotions, but his limbs were shaking inside his thick furs. He
made a supreme effort of memory. It was a moment in a lifetime, and he
knew it. Which is not always the case, for great moments often appear
great only when we look back at them.

He had not his code-books with him. He dared not carry them in the
streets of St. Petersburg, where arrest might meet him at any corner by
mistake or on erroneous suspicion. His head was stored with a thousand
things to be remembered. Could he trust his memory to find the right
word, or the word that came nearest to the emergency of this moment?
Could he telegraph that the Emperor was dead when he had last seen him
living, but assuredly feeling his way across the last frontier? The
Czar must assuredly be dead before a telegram despatched now could reach
England. It was a risk. But Cartoner was of a race of men who seem to
combine with an infinite patience the readiness to take a heavy risk at
a given moment.

The telegraph office was quiet. The clerks were dignified and sedate
behind their caging--stiff and formal within their semi-military
uniform. They knew nothing. As soon as the news reached them the
inexorable wire windows would be shut down, and no unofficial telegrams
could be despatched from Russia.

Cartoner had five minutes' start, perhaps, in front of the whole world.
Five minutes might suffice to flash his news beyond the reach of recall.

The sense of discipline was strong in him. His first message was to
London--a single word from the storehouse of his infallible memory.

He sent a second telegram to Deulin, in Warsaw, which was no longer.
The first message might reach its destination. The chances of the second
were not so good, and the second might mean life or dea