The Tzar knows little of the horrors committed in his name. He has never been inside the tenth pavilion in Warsaw Citadel, where starving people have, times without number, been knouted to death. He knows nothing of the dark underground dungeons overrun with vermin in the Peter-Paul Fortress; he has never breathed their fœtid, poisoned atmosphere. Even when he crossed Siberia the officials who surrounded him took every precaution to prevent him from witnessing the troops of wretched, shivering humanity trudging through trackless snows and driven to their gloomy tombs with knouts and butt-ends. Revolutionists are the creation of circumstances, of the general discontent of the people, of the striving of Russia after a new social framework. Discontent only grows the more when it is repressed. For this reason the places of slain and imprisoned Revolutionists are constantly taken by individuals who come forth from among the people in ever-increasing numbers, and who are still more embittered, still more energetic. Truly the Imperial Autocracy is tottering towards its doom. By a special order issued from the Press Bureau at St. Petersburg copies of this book are prohibited from entering the Russian Empire, while, not content with the formal interdiction of my novel, “Guilty Bonds,” which deals with a political conspiracy, the Russian Government has also sent one of its emissaries to my house in London to inform me of the fact. This, I believe, is a personal attention received by no other English author. The methods of the agents of the Russian Secret Police in London and the measures taken by the Revolutionists to repress their activity will probably be a revelation to English readers, some of whom will doubtless recognise a few of the following chapters as having appeared in my “Strange Tales of a Nihilist,” now out of print. That I have been compelled to bestow fictitious names upon the actors in these dramas, add and suppress certain incidents, and change the scene in more than one instance, is obvious; nevertheless, I anticipate that many will recognise in Anton Prèhznev’s stories solutions of more than one sensational mystery that has startled Europe. WILLIAM LE QUEUX. CONTENTS. CHAP. PAGE I. WHY I BECAME A NIHILIST 11 II. ON TRACKLESS SNOWS 35 III. MY FRIEND, THE PRINCESS 56 IV. THE BURLESQUE OF DEATH 77 V. SOPHIE ZAGAROVNA’S SECRET 99 VI. BY A VANISHED HAND 117 VII. A ROMANCE OF THE STEPPE 139 VIII. THE VELVET PAW 151 IX. THE JUDAS-KISS 172 X. AN IMPERIAL SUGAR PLUM 192 XI. THE CONFESSION OF VASSILII 212 XII. FALSE ZERO 231 XIII. THE FATE OF THE TRAITOR 250 XIV. AN IKON OATH 271