"
"What is the Trogzmondoff?"
"A bleak 'Rock in the Baltic,' Madam, the prison in which death is the
only goal that releases the victim."
Dorothy rose trembling, staring at him, her lips white.
"'A Rock in the Baltic!' Is that a prison, and not a fortress, then?"
"It is both prison and fortress, Madam. If Russia ever takes the risk
of arresting a foreigner, it is to the Trogzmondoff he is sent. They
drown the victims there; drown them in their cells. There is a spring
in the rock, and through the line of cells it runs like a beautiful
rivulet, but the pulling of a lever outside stops the exit of the
water, and drowns every prisoner within. The bodies are placed one by
one on a smooth, inclined shute of polished sandstone, down which this
rivulet runs so they glide out into space, and drop two hundred feet
into the Baltic Sea. No matter in what condition such a body is found,
or how recent may have been the execution, it is but a drowned man in
the Baltic. There are no marks of bullet or strangulation, and the
currents bear them swiftly away from the rock."
"How come you to know all this which seems to have been concealed from
the rest of the world?"
"I know it, Madam, for the best of reasons. I was sentenced this very
year to Trogzmondoff. In my youth trading between Helsingfors and New
York, I took out naturalization papers in New York, because I was one
of the crew on an American ship.
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