Princess Zara

In order better to carry out the plans I had made it was necessary that

I should depart from the palace and I secured apartments in a

respectable but quiet section of the city, where I established myself

under the name of Dubravnik; and it was generally understood by those

who came in contact with me that I was a pardoned exile who had been

permitted to return under stipulated conditions, as such men are

sometimes, though rarely, allowed to do. In the mean time I had

gathered around me several certain individuals whom I had known and

employed in the past, and whom I knew from experience that I could

trust; and there was not one Russian among them. The Russian may be

trusted always wherever his heart is involved and his political

conscience is at rest, but never unless those forces are working in

sympathy with the employment of his hands and head.

I sent to Paris for Michael O'Malley whose long residence there had

outwardly transformed him from an Irishman to a Frenchman, and who for

convenience spelled his name Malet, thus retaining the sound without

the substance. He opened a café, which because of its excellence

speedily became the resort of the higher officers of the Russian army

stationed at St. Petersburg. Every one of the waiters in his

establishment were spies in his employ brought with him from Paris, and

not one of them knew of my existence. Thus they did their work in the

dark, but they did it well. Another Irishman, Tom Coyle, who looked

like a Russian, established a cab stand on the English plan, and he had

a small army of men under him who worked in the same way as Malet's

servants. A Frenchman and his wife--their names were St. Cyr--ran a

high class intelligence office, and furnished valets, maids, cooks,

coachmen, etc., for the best families at the Russian capitol. I had one

assistant who taught singing to the nobility, and another who was a

master at arms and gave lessons in the science of handling all kinds of

weapons. In the less pretentious quarters of the city I had proprietors

of fourth rate cafés on my list; also loungers, loafers, seeming

drunkards, laborers. But more important than these I succeeded in

securing for one of my best men--an American--the management of the

city Messenger Service; and one by one he contrived to replace the

messengers by others of his own selection, until many of them were

unknowingly members of my staff. Unknowingly, mind you, for therein

existed much of the secret of my power. My workers did not know what

they did. Canfield really did great work for me while he held that

position, and I must not neglect to give him credit for it.

O'Malley, Coyle, the St. Cyrs and Canfield were really therefore the

several component parts of my immediate staff and those five were the

only persons among all my hundreds of workers who knew Dubravnik to be

their chief; and it is a perfectly safe statement to say that in all

St. Petersburg, nay in all the world at that time, there were but nine

persons living who had the least knowledge or even suspicion of my

business; the nine were the czar, Prince Michael, the five already

named, myself and Morét now in solitary confinement although in a

comfortably appointed room in one of the prisons.