It is quite
a neat example of the shocker--an agreeable form of entertainment for
the simple and the jaded. The chief properties are a yellow ticket and
a hat-pin. Both belong to the innocent and beautiful Jewish heroine,
_Anna Mirol_.
It appears that she wanted to leave the pale to go to see her dying
father in Petersburg, and the police, who will have their grim
joke against a Jewess, offer her "the most powerful passport in
Russia"--the yellow ticket of Rahab. She accepts it desperately,
and, to escape its horrible obligations, enters an English family
as governess, under an assumed name. Here the head of the sinister
Okhrana (Secret Police Bureau), a sleek red-haired sensualist, _Baron
Stepan Andreyeff_, and a chivalrous but tactless English journalist,
_Julian Rolfe_, become acquainted with her. The latter wishes to marry
her; the former's intentions are strictly dishonourable, and with the
aid of his ubiquitous secret policemen he persecutes her, using his
power to set her free from the attentions of his detestable minions
for bargaining purposes in a perfectly Hunnish manner.
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