They clasped hands, and Sabatoff stepped from the sleigh and disappeared into a cross street. Drexel started the horse into a walk and the men fell into double file behind him. As they passed a street lamp Drexel looked back to take the measure of his escort. Of the front pair one nodded at him, and the other gave him a wink and a grin. “Nicolai--Ivan!” he breathed. Nicolai responded with a formal salute. Ivan’s pock-marked face grinned again and his little eyes glinted with excitement. “Great business!” he whispered, nodding his head. As they moved on Drexel’s suspense tightened. One chance in a hundred, Sabatoff had said, and on so desperate a hazard hung the life of Sonya. Yes, and Borodin’s life, and his own, and if not the lives at least the freedom of Razoff, The White One, and the dozen of his escort. And the slightest mistake, the slightest misfortune, would instantly be the ruin of all! His foremost fear was that he might be intercepted before he reached the prison. The city was filled with soldiers, the gendarmerie were skulking everywhere; what more natural than that some squad should fall in with them, penetrate their deception and place them under arrest? Drexel expected some late-prowling company to rush out upon them as they passed every dark cross street--as they passed the huge pile of St. Isaac’s Cathedral, whose cavernous shadows seemed the lurking place of surprises--as they passed the Winter Palace of the Czar--as they traversed the long bridge that arched the Neva’s ice. But save for a few sleighs and a sleepy policeman or two, the streets were void and silent--as silent as though frozen by the bitter cold; and without having been once addressed they drew nigh the mighty Fortress. Before the dark gateway--how many lofty souls had entered there never to come out!--he paused, almost choking with the nearness of the climax. Even the night seemed to hold its breath. Fifteen more minutes would decide it all. Fifteen more minutes and Sonya would be free--or he, too, would be a prisoner in the bowels of the Fortress. Other fears suddenly assailed him. Suppose the governor should detect something wrong in the order for the prisoners? Or, worse still--and what more likely?--suppose the governor, desiring instruction upon some detail of the transfer, had called up the real administrator of prisons and had thus laid bare the plot?--and even now was cunningly waiting for him to appear to snap the prison doors behind him like the doors of a trap? A hundred chances against them? Standing beneath those frowning walls, the odds seemed worse a hundred times than that! CHAPTER XXVI THE JAWS OF DEATH But the odds had to be taken. “Ring the bell, Ivan,” Drexel ordered. Ivan did so, and the gates slowly creaked open upon their frozen hinges. A sentry appeared, looking more a bear than a man in his huge sheepskin coat. “Who’s there?” he demanded. “Captain Laroque,” Drexel gruffly returned. “Come in, captain.”