The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, May 29, 1904, Page 15

"THE SAN FRANCISCO SUNDAY CALL. Central News and ad of stop- ne a head- making ev I come ReD HOoT. ST10VES I HAaveE MET: nk I have learned the trick And I don't suppose, than fifty g to teach What I com- is that they do learn. “You do ing the coal akes us n THEY GATRHRER ZOUND IME [N A GROUP “AND WATCH IMFE, THE CABABLE, ALL- HNOWING FFEAD WEO TEARRS 77y OFOREIGN STOVE.. their lves. They a group and watch me, the capable, all-knowing head who s no foreign stove. But there are days when I get tired of going round making up fires. is It suticlent to understand c terror of round me s stoves Hitherto I have been speaking only of the stove supposed to be best suited to reception rooms and bed- rooms. The hall is provided with an- r sort of stove altogether; an iron e this, that turns up its nose at = and potato peelings. If you give nything else but the best coal it »des. It is like living surrounded by peppery ~'d colomels, trying to pass a peaceful winter among these pas- sionate stoves. There is a stove in the kitchen to be used only for roast- ing: this one will not look at anything else but wood. Give It a bit of coal, meaning to be kind, and before you are out of the room’ it has exploded. Then thare is a trick stove, specially popular in Belgium. It has a little door at the top and another little door at the bottom, and looks llke a pepper cas- tor. Whether it is happy or not de- pends upon these two little doors. There are times when it feels it wants the bottom loor shut and the top door open, or vice versa, or both open at the same time, or both shut—it is a fussy lttle stove. Ordihary intelligence does not help you much with this stove. You want to be bred in the country. It is a question of instinct; you have to have Belgian blood in your veins to get on comfortably with it.- On the whole, it. is a mild Ilittle stove, this Beigian pet. It does not often explode; it only gets angry, and throws its cover into the alr, and flings hot ¢ about the room. It lives, generally speaking, in- side an n cupboard with two doors. When ¥ want it you open these doors and puil it out into the room. It works on a swivel. And when you don’t want /B EROME. * JEROITEZ the time everything has been extin- guished you have made up your mind to substitute for it just the ordinary explosive stove to which you are ae- customed. In your cwn house you can, of course, open the wi t the fore thin man be always mad. you is ¢ th it that than 90 deg: a window is genera carrying pa six seats t 1iring the scen- opened the door k photographs T carriage open doorway. r, no doubt, and her ways, shrugged the and retired. The d their bags and bundles, and wrap: themselves up in shawis and Jaeger nightshirts. I met the ladies afterwarcC in the Lau- sanne. They told me they had been condemned to a fine of forty framcs apiece. They also explained to me that they had not the slightest intention of paying it ther passengers ed From Page Two. afternoon he picked on the ter- e he had seized she would have first place because not end with the BY A HAIR'S BREADTH | to Voiborth that, certain, Fortescue h: going to Versai files of the Briti represe: not with them nor was he to be seen elsewhere in the nearer precincts of the chateau. Far as the eye could reach the two great avenues were crowded on ides with less favored spectators kept in order by thick lines of soldiers e bayo glittered in the sun. But it was scarcely likely that Fortes- cue, it he came at all, would come as 2 mere vulgar sight-seer to be hustled n seething mass. glad that he is not here, gh I more than haif expected him up in spite of my warning,” orth congratulated himself. “It is the charming Miss Metcalf would ¥ hard lines’ for him, with his ss for this in-and-out work, to to lay low. He has to thank him- or it, through poking his nose into ornet’s nest at Boulogne, a:d I m and ‘Herr Winckel's’ little friend for these fairly safe ar- rangements here to-day.” And as the distant’blare of trumpets he coming of the Tsar, he looked round with complacency at Olga Palitzin and Weletski, hedged in by a cordon of unobstrusive mouchards ready at the first suspicious movement to stretch out restraining hands. But the conduct of the suspects yielded no provocation to arrest, At various points they gazed idly at the approaching cor- tege from the balustrade of the terrace, without attempting to gain vantage ground npear the flight of steps leading tho to Vol call fond: hav from the e lower level of the gardens or yway, kept clear for the vis- itors to pass into the chateau. And so, amid the respectful homage of people on the terrace, and fol- lowed by the yells of the Parisian mob in the park below, the Imperial party entered the stately home of Louis the Great. Yet not till Nicholas and Alex- androvna had reappeared in the bal- cony to bow their acknowledgments and had retired to inspect the interior wonders of the chateau did Volborth breathe free In the official pro- gramme it was laid down that after viewing the palace the Tsar and Tsar- ina were to rest in their own apart- ments the grand banquet at 7 o'clock, and inside the vast pile, with double sentries at every door, they would be as safe as in the Winter Palace. “All that remains is to shepherd Madame Olga and Company back to Paris,” muttered Volborth. And after leaving instructions that the suspects should not be lost sight of, he hurrfed into the chateau to compare notes with Restofski. Gathering from that zeal- ous colleague that nothing of note had transpired en route, he returned to the terrace to resume command of his spies, and he found the crowd of in- vited spectators rapidly thinning. The park had already been cleared of the lower orders by the troops who were falling in for their journey to the capi- tal. He had no sooner set foot on the ter- race than one of his subordinates came running up. “They have gone down into the gar- dens, nearly in ¢ body,” sald the man. “The others are after them. I only re- mained to inform your Excellency.” “Good!” replied Volborth. “That looks like a bolt from their lair. Let us follow, my friend.” And descending the steps into the broad pleasance, he saw the Princess leaning on the arm of th vulture- faced old man to whom she was ap- parently pointing out the beauty of the splashing fountains. After waiting a while they passed on toward the park, where among the leafy glades the eve- ning shadows were deepeniig. And in desultory formation behind straggled Krasnovitch, Anna Tchigorin and Ser- Jov. About this time the Russian suite were coming off duty. Some bored, and some admiring, they bad duly tramped through the Salle des Glaces, the apart- ments of the Great King, the museum and the art galleries; and now while the Tsar and Tsarina rested, they would be free till the hour of the banquet. Boris Dubrowski had been in personal attendance, and was the last to be dis- missed at the door of his Covereign's private rooms; so that when he came to the corridor where the other members of the suite were lodged they had al- ready vanished into their own apart- ments. Instead of entering the corridor, he made his way by the grand staircase to the ground floor; and his uniform gain- ing him unquestioned egress, he passed out on to the now nearly deserted ter- races. The scene was in striking con- trast to that of two hours before. Save for a few lingerers to be counted on the hand, the crowd had all departed. The lowing of cattle in the distant pastures, and the cawing of the rooks away down in the memory-haunted park, alone broke the silence of the old-world de- mesne. It was an hour and a season, with an all-powerful monarch housed once more in the chateau, when a phil- osophic mind would have mused on the change that two centuries can wreak on the affairs of men. But the young Russian was no phii- osopher, and he had other fish to fry than ditations on the Grand Mon- arque and the bygone glory of Ver- sailles. That he had a purpose quite distinet from mere loitering was evi- denced by the brisk pace at which he traversed the gardens, and, always with hjs eves about him, walked on by way ¢? the avenue of the Grand Tria- non into the park. “This must be the turning indicated by Monsieur Fortescue.” he muttered, as he came at length to a cross-road hand. And quitting the broad drive, he followed the left-hand road for a little way till on one side he saw a feotpath winding off into still deeper solitudes. Feeling now sure of his ground, he struck into the path, which presently brought him te an open glade sur- rounded on all sides by thick under- growth. In the center a marble fawn gleamed white in the twilight, and sev- eral other paths converging on the cir- cular space gave it the character of the heart of & maze. Convinced now that he had found the place he sought, he drew back a pace or two.into the path by which he had approached and waited. His nerves were all a-tingle, six-foot body guards- man though he was, and hre started at the slightest sound. A squifrel run- ning across the glade caused him to mop his damp brow, with a hardly re- strained imprecation on his own fears. But the moments sped by, and peer as he might down the dark alsles of the opposite pathways, nothing came to break the monotony of his suspense. “If 1 had not seen their Majesties en- ter their apartments, and with my own ears heard them say that 'y should remain there, I could bear this no lon- ger,” he told himself at the end of & quarter of an hour. > And then in the obscurity of one of the converging paths—not in front, but running into the glade at right angles to him—a twig cracked. A moment later Olga Palitzin sauntered slowly in- to the open, and stood a clear-cut fig- ure in maize-color looking toward the path exactly opposite Boris. She was quite alone as she stood under the statue, buti-ominous sound—again a twig cracked in the leafy alley whence she had come. Suddenly, while the aide-de-camp watched with expectant eyes the wo- man who had fooled him, his gaze was caught by @ shimmer of white in the path opposite, and a moment later his heart stood still. Advancing carelessly into the glade from the gloom of the pathway, two figures whose familiar garb turned him sick with horror—the long"gray overcoat and astrakan cap of the Tsar, and the white dress covered with a fawn-colored dust coat which the Empress had worn that day, left no doubt in his mind that Fortescue had made a terrible mistake in trusting to the permanence of Imperial inten- tions. Their Majesties must have come out, after all, for a quiet walk in the park before the functions of the eve- ning, and were running straight into Heaven only knew what ambush of their ruthless enemies. Boris was no coward, and with the need for -action came calmness. He saw Olga step forward and cast herself on her knees; he saw the gray-coated form start back as though in surprise; and he had only begu= to see four other figures gliding toward the group whose attention was then held, when with a wild curse that he wag:not wearing his sword he found that he was half way across the glade, interposing his body between the assassins and the threat- ened pair. There was a gleam of knives, a simultaneous rush from be- hind, and Boris went down stabbed in the chest by Serjov, just as Volborth and a dozen police spies, French and Russian, threw themselvés on the con- — spirators. It was all over in five sec- onds. Olga Palitzin and her followers were overpowered and taken. Bareheaded and pale to the lips Vol- borth came forward. “Thank God that your Majesties are safe,” he faltered. “We have had these people under observation all day, and followed them hither in no thought that your Majesties were anywhere than in the chateau. Restofski bad orders not to let you out of his sight. I cannot understand—" But the stately woman in the dust- cloak was on her knees by the stricken man, stanching his wound with her handkerchief and sobbing bitte The long gray overcoat and the astrakan coat of her companion were “being tossed on to the grass. “Let us see to this has proved his 1 kneeling at wanted him to did not think that you wo cut it quite so fine as to let them get their knives home, Paul.” S sy e o The notes placed at the disp. the compiler by M. Volborth co: reference to his personal view of trick played upon him by his En friend. In fact, they conclude some- brave man who ** said Fortesc ili's side. I ve his chance, but I what abruptly at this point with the that the arrested Ni- deported to Rus- gs being curt statement hilists were sia, extrad foregone by a priv arrangs with the French authorities. But as the official know ese pages as tly seen din- str B them plain that their Paul Volberth was r ing at the Cafe R with Spencer F being very mer intimacy was “And here,” a letter from II means to let t self. Let us go and tel THE END. tescue rising, “is g that she alsa ke care of it- the patient.™