“Baron,” said the _Chargé_. “Let me present to you Mr. and Mrs. Caruth, just married by the Reverend Mr. Forbes, who will shortly officiate at your own wedding. A foreign-born wife, as you of course know, takes the status of her husband and becomes a citizen of his country. Mr. and Mrs. Caruth are about to sail for America on the _Sea Spume_, leaving Russia forever. I give you my personal assurance of this. Would you mind viséing their passports, and thus guaranteeing them safe conduct out of Russia?” The Baron swallowed once or twice. Then he smiled. “We Russians are not all quite so black as we are painted,” he said. “I shall be happy to endorse their passports.” He paused for a moment. “I regret to add,” he finished, “that the visé will be good for twenty-four hours only.” He turned to the Professor, who was plucking him by the sleeve. “I have not forgotten, Professor,” he smiled. “You want your daughter. Your _own_ daughter, I mean, of course. There she stands,” and he pointed to Mrs. Caruth. CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX If Florence had delayed her flight from Helsingfors a day longer, she would probably not have gone at all. At practically the same moment at which she arrived at St. Petersburg, Bill Wilkins left that city, having completed arrangements for the shipment of the gold. He had found the task of finding a ship a difficult one. Ten tons of gold was not freight that would ordinarily be found in the possession of a man of Wilkins’s appearance, and the fact that he wanted to get it out of the country secretly was abundant proof that he had come by it illegally. To explain the true nature of the stuff he wanted to ship, was to risk arrest by the police on the one hand, and robbery and murder by those who aided him on the other. Yet it was practically impossible to conceal the fact that it was gold with which he wished to escape. Its mere weight would almost inevitably betray its character, for it was not credible that he should be willing to pay the sum necessary to induce a captain to violate the laws and risk his ship in order to carry off a few tons of lead, which was about the only conceivable substance of approximately equal weight. Gold, of course, might be so packed in boxes too large for it, as to conceal its relative weight, but the Wilkins brothers had no means at hand to enable them to do this. Under these circumstances, it was not surprising that it took Wilkins practically all of the ten days he had supposed might be required to make his arrangements. He made them at last, however, with a villainous-looking captain, who drove a very hard bargain, and whom Wilkins suspected would turn robber if given the ghost of an opportunity. Neither he nor Tom, however, shrank from taking risks.