We only know that it never
leaves us as it found us.
Then, leaning quietly against the stove, Vassili stated his case.
"Rather more than a year ago," he said, "I received an offer of the
papers connected with a great scheme in this country. After certain
enquiries had been made I accepted the offer. I paid a fabulous price
for the papers. They were brought to me by a lady wearing a thick
veil--a lady I had never seen before. I asked no questions, and paid her
the money. It subsequently transpired that the papers had been stolen,
as you perhaps know, from the house of Count Stepan Lanovitch--the house
to which you happen to be going--at Thors. Well, that is all ancient
history. It is to be supposed that the papers were stolen by Sydney
Bamborough, who brought them here--probably to this hotel, where his
wife was staying. He handed her the papers, and she conveyed them to me
in Paris. But before she reached Petersburg they would have been missed
by Stepan Lanovitch, who would naturally suspect the man who had been
staying in his house, Bamborough--a man with a doubtful reputation in
the diplomatic world, a professed doer of dirty jobs. Foreseeing this,
and knowing that the League was a big thing, with a few violent members
on its books, Sydney Bamborough did not attempt to leave Russia by the
western route.
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