THE CHRONICLES OF MICHAEL DANEVITCH OF THE RUSSIAN SECRET SERVICE BY DICK DONOVAN AUTHOR OF ‘THE MAN-HUNTER,’ ‘TRACKED AND TAKEN,’ ‘CAUGHT AT LAST,’ ‘A DETECTIVE’S TRIUMPHS,’ ‘VIDOCQ,’ ETC. LONDON CHATTO & WINDUS 1897...

A year or two before the outbreak of the Franco Prussian War a daring attempt was made upon the life of the Emperor of Russia. He had been out shooting in the neighbourhood of St. Petersburg, and was returning at dusk in company with numerous friends and a large suite. As the Royal carriage passed an isolated house on a country road, which was bordered on each side by a dense pine forest, a bomb was hurled from an upper window of the house. Fortunately it did not strike the carriage, as was inte

One evening, towards the end of summer, four Government officials left Moscow for St. Petersburg in charge of an enormous amount of money, partly in specie, but for the most part in Russian rouble notes. The money was consigned to the Treasury in St. Petersburg. All the officials had been in the Government service for a long time, and were selected for this special duty on account of their trustworthiness and the confidence reposed in them by the heads of the department to which they belonged. T

During his long and remarkable career, Danevitch was called upon to solve problems of a very varied nature, and, while his efforts were not always crowned with success—and he never hesitates in his journals to confess his failures—the percentage of his triumphs was very large. Necessarily, of course, his work lay amongst the by-ways and alleys of life, so to speak; for so long as there are crimes and criminals—and that will be as long as the world lasts—men must be found who will endeavour to le

It can readily be understood that Danevitch led not only an active life, but a varied one; and the cases he was called upon to deal with revealed many remarkable phases of human nature. He never attempted to pose as a moralist, but he frequently deplored the fact that wickedness and evil should so largely predominate over goodness. He was also apt to wax indignant against the vogue to decry anything in the nature of sensation. He was in the habit of saying that life from the cradle to the grave

Possibly very few readers of these chronicles know anything of the peculiarity—I had almost said iniquity—of the Russian law. The freeborn Briton, who in his own country may spout and write treason as long as it pleases him, and do anything that is not regarded as a legally punishable offence—and the law is very tolerant in this respect—is apt to open his eyes in astonishment when he goes on the Continent and finds himself haled to a prison-house simply because he has been jotting down some memo

Ferguson, Tauchnitz and Co. were the largest firm of exporters in Riga. Their trade consisted of tallow, timber, corn, flax, hemp, flax-seed, quills, furs, etc. They had agents all over the great Russian Empire, including the far eastern and far northern parts of Siberia. The trade was principally with Great Britain, and it was said the firm employed a fleet of upwards of a hundred steam and sailing vessels, besides numerous small craft for the navigation of the Russian rivers. Donald Ferguson,

Count Obolensk had resided in London for a good many years. He occupied a magnificent house in the neighbourhood of Hyde Park, where he lived in almost regal style. He kept a retinue of servants. The furnishings and appointments of his princely abode were said to be unique; and he dispensed hospitality with a lavish hand. He was known to be wealthy, to be a member of a very old and influential Russian family, and at one time to have held a high political position in his own country. Here the gen

Moscow —or, as the natives call it, Maskva—might almost be described as a city within a city; that is to say, there is the Kremlin, and a town outside of that again. The word Kremlin is derived from the Slavonic word Krim, which signifies a fort. It is built on a hill, and is surrounded by a high turreted wall from twelve to sixteen feet thick. This wall varies from thirty to sixty feet high, and is furnished with battlements, embrasures, and gates. Within the Kremlin are most of the Government

‘ I received orders,’ says Danevitch, ‘to proceed without delay to the official residence in St. Petersburg of Prince Ignatof, [A] who was then Minister of Foreign Affairs. He had the reputation of being one of the most powerful Ministers who had ever held the position in Russia. It was said of him, as it used to be said of Bismarck, that he was a man of blood and iron. He was dead to emotion; he had no nerves; he was pitiless; he was anti-everything that wasn’t Russian; but he was also a born d

The period was the reign of Alexander II. The time, the afternoon of a day in early summer. The place, an office in the huge building in St. Petersburg known as the Palace of the Admiralty, one of the finest and most imposing structures of the kind in the world. Its principal front is more than a quarter of a mile in length, while its wings, which extend to the Neva, are nearly seven hundred feet long. In this palace an enormous number of people are employed, including many women; and here the w

A strange , weird sort of place was Corbie Hall. There was an eeriness about it that was calculated to make one shudder. For years it had been practically a ruin, and tenantless. Although an old place, it was without any particular history, except a tradition that a favourite of Queen Mary had once lived there, and suddenly disappeared in a mysterious way. He was supposed to have been murdered and buried secretly. The last tenant was one Robert Crease, a wild roisterer, who had travelled much be

I was in Liverpool, engaged on a rather delicate matter, when I received a telegram from the chief of the police in Edinburgh, telling me to return by the next train. I wasn’t at all pleased by this recall, for it was wretched weather, and the prospect of a night journey to the North was far from agreeable. The date was January 3. During the whole of New Year’s Eve there had been a violent storm, which seems to have been general all over the country. The result was a breakdown of telegraph-wires

Peter Brodie stood very high in his profession. He had made his mark as a detective, and had solved some very complicated problems. In recalling him from Liverpool, whither he had been sent on important business, the authorities felt that if the Corbie Hall mystery was to be cleared up he was the man to do it. They saw from the first that it was a very difficult case, when all the circumstances were considered, but they were sure that Brodie was the one man likely to tackle it successfully. It s