"No; I hardly think that. The nihilists would not be likely to send
more than one at a time on such a dangerous errand."
Morét confessed to me the following day, and I speedily was convinced
that my suppositions concerning him were correct. He had not had the
brutal courage to carry out his orders; and already he had received
several warnings from his compatriots that if another week passed
without his accomplishment of the design, his own life would pay the
forfeit. He was in that room awaiting my arrival when he heard me
approaching with the prince, and had concealed himself behind the
curtain without any definite purpose other than to hear all that he
could.
It is hardly necessary, and there is not space, for me to go into the
details of my subsequent talks with Morét. Suffice it to say that the
information I gleaned in that way, proved of inestimable value to my
work. From it I learned the names of all the leading nihilists of St.
Petersburg and Moscow, their meeting places, their passwords, and
several of their ciphers. Concerning their plans for the future, beyond
those in which he was personally engaged, Morét knew almost nothing;
but he did put me in the way of finding out nearly all that I wished to
know. Nor is it necessary that I should describe my subsequent
interviews with the emperor. My plans were adopted almost without a
correction--and most of those I suggested myself--so that by the time I
had been an inmate of the palace for a week, the reorganization of the
Fraternity of Silence was well under way, and ere a month had passed it
was an established fact.
There was one point upon which Morét stubbornly refused to talk, and
that was concerning the woman who had led him into the difficulty, and
who, he confessed, was the brains and the real head of the society. I
questioned him very closely and so decided in my own mind that she was
prominent at the capital; but at the last he positively refused to
answer any further questions concerning her, saying that he would
rather go to Siberia and have done with it at once, than to betray her.
I desisted, therefore, believing that ultimately he would denounce her
to me without knowing that he had done so, and events proved that I was
right although they also demonstrated that it would have been much
better for all concerned had he trusted me implicitly in the beginning.
Thus, at the end of a month succeeding the night of my ride from the
hotel to the palace with the prince, I was prepared to commence work in
earnest; but it must not be supposed that I had been idle, personally,
during that time.