Cause of freedom

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SOME OF THE CHAPTERS ARE :-

1. A Chance Meeting

2. On the Devil’s Staircase

3. Volna Drakona

“DO you mean to take me for a spy?”

I had hard work to prevent myself laughing at the man to his face; and it is no light matter to laugh at these self-satisfied, bullying officials in Russian Poland. Some of them have too much power.

“Do I understand that you refuse to answer my questions and shew me your papers?”

“And what if I do?” He had burst into my room in the little inn at Bratinsk as I sat reading my paper over a cigar, and without any preface had fired his questions at me with the peremptory incivility of the average police agent. My temper had taken the intrusion badly.

He shrugged his shoulders and raised his eyebrows. “I am a police agent from Warsaw and must know your business in Bratinsk.”

At that I saw light. I recalled a paragraph I had just read in the Warsaw paper. I pointed to it. “Is this the key to your visit?”

“Ah, you have read it,” he replied with that offensive manner in which these people always contrive to imply that everything you say or do is a matter of suspicion.

“I’ll read it again now with more interest,” said I. I did so very deliberately, to gain time to cool my temper and see how it could possibly affect me.

“We are in a position to state that a raid was made two nights ago upon a house in the Kronplatz, which has long been suspected to be the Warsaw headquarters of a branch of the dangerous patriotic society known as the ‘P.F.F.’ (Polish Freedom Fraternity). The house was deserted at the time, but important papers were found which revealed the existence of a conspiracy of wide and far-reaching extent. The complete break-up of the powerful organization of the Freedom Fraternity is likely to be the result of the raid, and several well-known patriots are said to be implicated by the discoveries. Among the names rumoured is that of Count Peter Valdemar, once well known as the ‘Stormy Petrel’ of Polish politics.”

“Do you take me for Count Peter Valdemar?” I asked.

“I did not come here to be fooled,” was the angry reply. “If you will not comply with my demands, you must accompany me to Warsaw.”