The Princess' Oriental Garden

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.

It is well that I should say a word or two in reference to these
assistants of mine, in passing.

O'Malley was an Irishman of the finest type of bluff and honest
manhood. I have known him and tried him through many a difficulty where
his sterling qualities of character, his rugged honesty of purpose, his
unfailing loyalty and devotion to me and his uncanny qualities as an
investigator had endeared him to me both professionally and personally
beyond the expression of mere words to describe it. I knew that I could
rely upon him absolutely in all emergencies and that he was utterly
fearless in the face of any danger that might present itself. By
opening the café described, patronized by the elite of the Russian
capital he merely followed out a plan long before undertaken in Paris
for a like purpose and through the workings of his waiters and other
employees he possessed sources of information and facilities for
investigation unprecedented in their far reaching possibilities. There
is many a whispered word and undertoned conversation carried on at a
supper table over the coffee or a bottle of wine which finds its way
into the ears of servitors and O'Malley's duties consisted not alone in
piecing together after they were supplied to him these scraps of
conversation, but in having his workers spy upon certain personages
when they appeared at the café and so anticipate secrets which they
might have to unfold. Even he had lesser men in authority under him and
many of those who were almost directly under his employ believed that
they were allied to the regular secret police and did not know of their
employer's official capacity.