CHAPTER V.THE HIGHWAYMAN.
Of all our party, next to myself, Mary was the fondest of walking, and went with me oftenest on long excursions. We had driven up and down the Nevsky two or three times, but had never walked its entire length, as I proposed doing a few days before our intended departure from the city. It was one of those bright, sunshiny afternoons, which almost make amends for the ice and snow in which the city is wrapped a great portion of the year. There were very few in the street, either in the fashionable or common part of the Nevsky, and the air was so invigorating that we felt no fatigue, but walked on and on, past the Patoff house, which showed some signs of life.
A door and windows were open, and we saw a lackey or two dodging in and out. Probably the master had returned, and I felt a little thrill of pleasure at the thought of meeting him again. It was impossible not to like him for his great friendliness and the many times he had made it easy for us in a city hedged round withrules and spies and officials ready to take advantage of us.
For a long time after passing the Patoff house we went on, until at last we turned into quarters where I had never been. A glance told me that it was peopled by the poorest class; still, I kept on, noticing how hard were the faces of the women, and how squalid and dirty were the children playing by the doors of the houses. I had been anxious to talk with this class of people, and hear from their own lips a history of their lives and their much-vaunted adoration of the czar, who could do no wrong!
Here was my opportunity, and I was about to accost a tired-faced woman, and had bowed to her smilingly, when suddenly I was confronted by a shabbily dressed young man, whose cringing manner bespoke the professional beggar. Not knowing that I could understand him, he held out his hand, and then put it to his mouth, in token of hunger, a trick I had seen many times in Italy.
“What do you want?” I asked, drawing back from him, as he came so near to me that I smelled his breath of bad tobacco and vodka.
At the sound of his own language, his face brightened, and he exclaimed: “God be praised, madame speaks Russian! She is kind, I know, and was sent to help me, and will give me a few kopecks for my sick wife and two starving children. I came from Moscow a few weeks ago to get work, but can find none, with everybody out of the city. Fifty kopecks are all I ask.”
He was still holding his hand very close to me, and once touched my arm, while I was thinking what to do, and doubting the propriety of giving the man the fifty kopecks asked for. It was not a large sum—about twenty-five cents—for a sick wife and two starving children. In my weakness—for I am weak where poverty is concerned—I might have yielded if Mary had not pulled my sleeve, and whispered, frantically: “Come away, Miss Lucy! The man is an impostor! I believe we are among thieves!”
He could not have understood her words, but he divined their import, and instantly his manner changed, from a hungry beggar to that of a resolute bandit, sure of his prey. Snatching with one hand at the bag at my side, in which I was supposed to carry money, with the other he clutched at the ring on my ungloved hand, trying to wrench it from my finger. It was not a largestone, but a fine one, and its brilliancy in the sunlight had attracted his notice.
I held to my bag with one hand, but with the other I was powerless, for he held it as in a vise. I felt there was no use appealing to the women near us for help. They were looking on stolidly, as if a theft in open day was nothing new to them. One, however—the tired-faced woman to whom I had bowed—seemed agitated, and suggested that I call the police.
But there were none in sight. The street seemed deserted. Even thebutki, or box, on the far corner of the street, or square, where three men are always supposed to be stationed, to keep order, seemed also deserted, and I was left to fight my antagonist alone, with the probable result of being defeated. Suddenly, like an inspiration, Chance came into my mind. If he were there, I was safe. I did not know that he was home, but in my desperation I called, with all my might: “Chance, Chance, I want you!”
Almost before his name had left my lips, I heard the thud of his feet, like the hoofbeats of a horse, and knew that he was coming, but not the Chance I had ever seen before—mild-eyed and gentle as a baby. Every part of his body was bristling with rage, making him twice asbig as usual. His eyes were red as balls of fire, and his teeth showed white between his open jaws. If I had not known him, I should have thought him mad, and, as it was, I felt a little shiver of fear as he came rushing on, with a low, angry growl, and his head low down.
The bandit’s back was to him, and he did not know the danger threatening him until Chance came round in front and two big feet struck him in the stomach, stretching him upon the ground, with Chance standing over him and looking at me for instructions as to what he should do next. I had heard some Russian oaths, but never any quite so fierce as those which came from the lips of the prostrate young man, who had wrenched my bag from my side, and kept it, with a tight grip.
“Chance,” I said, pointing to the bag, “that is mine. Get it for me!”
He understood, and in a moment the bag was in my hand, and on that of the bandit was an ugly wound, where Chance’s teeth had been. The dog still kept his place over the fallen man, growling angrily whenever his foe attempted to rise.
“Please, lady, call him off!” the man pleaded, his face white and his teeth chattering with terror.
I was nearly as white as he was, and trembling in every limb, as I stood looking at him.
“Oh, please let me go before he nabs me!” he continued, as, lifting up his head, he looked down the long street, where a policeman was just appearing in response to a tardy summons from thebutki. “I’ve been in a dungeon, I’ve had the knout, and they did not make me any better. Let me go,” he said. “I did wrong, and am sorry!”
The knout and dungeon had an ugly sound. All my womanly pity awoke for the wretch, who was little more than a boy.
“I’ll give you another chance to do better,” I said, bidding the dog come to me, which he did rather unwillingly, growling savagely as the man sprang up, and, picking up his hat, exclaimed: “Thanks, lady! I’ll not forget it!” and then disappeared into some den or alley.
The women began to gather around me by this time, all talking together, and evidently so pleased at the escape of the thief that I was almost as much afraid of them as of him. The tired-faced woman, however, who had suggested the police, was different, and, when she asked me to sit down, I assented, for I was very tired, and went toward her door.
“Wait a moment,” she said, as she saw me about to sit upon the doorstep, which was rather dusty, but which I preferred to a seat inside, because it was in the open air.
Bringing a broom, she swept the step clean, and, taking off her apron, folded it and laid it down for a cushion for Mary and me, while she took a seat inside the door. Mary was nearly in a state of collapse with fright, and did not refuse a drink of the vodka a woman offered her in a broken cup. The strong liquor, which nearly strangled her, did her good, for she sat up in a moment and began to pull her dress away from contact with those near her.
Chance had stretched himself at my feet, but his head was up and alert, as if scenting mischief. Evidently he did not like the neighborhood, for he looked at me occasionally, as if asking why I was here, and why I did not leave. Several children gathered round him, timidly at first; then, as they gained courage, putting their little, dirty hands on his shaggy side, and calling him Chance, and a good dog, to which attention he responded rather indifferently, with a whack or two of his bushy tail.
“Do they all know him?” I asked, in some surprise, and forgetting that they had heard me call his name.
“Oh, yes,” the woman answered. “We all know Michel Seguin’s dog—a better detective, they say, than his master, if he chooses to use him, which he not often does.”
The policeman now came up, and began to question the crowd as to the recent disturbance. At sight of him, the children drew back and huddled closely together, but the women stood their ground, and began to tell the story, but shielded the thief as much as possible. A man had snatched at madame’s purse, and she had set the dog on him, was the amount of information, until a child called out, in a little piping voice, as she pointed toward me:
“Ask her. She talks our way.”
Scanning me very closely, as if I had been some rare curiosity, the man said: “You are the American madame who speaks our language so well?”
I did not like his face or his manner. He was brusque and rough, and different from any gendarme with whom I had come in contact, but I replied that I was from America, and could speak his language.
“Tell me, then,” he said, “the right of this row. I can make nothing from the jargon of these cattle, who evidently wish to shield their friend.”
I told him the story briefly, and described the man as well as I could.
“Carl Zimosky, by Heaven!” he exclaimed, bringing his fist down upon his side, and addressing himself to the women, one of whom nodded.
Then, turning to me, with an angry frown, he continued: “Andyoulet him escape!Youlet Carl Zimosky go, when you might have kept him so easily! Carl Zimosky is one of the worst felons we have, and is slippery as an eel—a thief and a pickpocket. A sick wife and two starving children! He has no wife, nor children. He is not twenty-one. We have had him up twice.”
“Yes, he told me he had been in a dungeon and under the knout, and they made him worse,” I said, looking at him very calmly and coolly.
“And perhaps that is the reason you let him go. You thought him a nihilist, and I’ve been told you sympathize with them. Madame,” he continued, his voice growing louder and his manner so offensive that Chance got up, looked at him and growled, shook his sides, looked at me, and lay down again, nearer to me, with his head stretched forward, as if listening, while the gendarme went on: “Madame, these things may do in the United States, butnot here in Russia! You may get into trouble, if youarea woman and an American!”
He fairly swelled with importance as he delivered this threatening speech, which did not move me, except to make me angry. I was not afraid. I knew that, at a word from me, Chance would have him by the throat, and of what might come after that I did not think or care.
“Sir!” I began, rising to my feet, in order to look over the heads of the women, who at the man’s angry words had gathered in front of me, like a fence, to keep me from harm. “Sir! do you think I am going to stay all the afternoon keeping guard over Carl Simpsy, or Simpson, or whatever his name is, waiting for you, or some other laggard, to come? Where were you, that you were not attending to your business? I have seen policemen in all parts of the city except here, where, it seems, they are needed——”
“And where you ought never to have come,” he interrupted, in a much lower tone than he had at first assumed. “It is no place for women, alone, and I don’t believe you’d got away with any money or jewelry you may have about you now, if it were not for that dog. Where, in Heaven’s name, did he come from? I thoughtSeguin was out of town. This Zimosky is suspected of robbing his house last night, and we are looking for him.”
“Robbed Michel Seguin’s house!” I exclaimed, a half wish throbbing through my brain that I had detained the man.
The gendarme must have guessed my thought, for he said, with a sneering smile: “Madame feels differently now that Seguin is concerned. I have heard you were very friendly with him.”
I was too angry to answer, and I felt that my face was as red as my hair. The women began at once to ask questions concerning the robbery, but the gendarme did not deign to answer them. They werecattle, as he had designated them, and, as just then there came a whistle which he understood, with a scowl at the women and children and a look I did not like at myself, he walked away in pursuit of some poor wretch—Carl, perhaps, I thought, as I sat down again upon the doorstep, faint and tired from my recent encounter.
Only the woman on whose doorstep and on whose apron I was sitting was willing to talk. She seemed superior to her neighbors, with a look upon her face as ifnothing mattered to her now. In reply to my questions, she said that Paul Strigoff, the gendarme who had just left us, was one of the hardest and cruelest of the lot, and he was more a German than a Russian. Carl had been in prison, and nearly killed with the knout, but he had his good parts, and would share his last crust or kopecks with a friend.
“He is”—and she hesitated a moment; then began, in tolerably fair English; and, when I looked at her in surprise, she explained that she had once lived in England for a year, and learned the language. “I was not always what I am now,” she said. “It is a great fall from the Court Quay to this place, but I have made the descent, and was so bruised and stunned that life holds nothing for me now—nothing—and what goes on around me rather amuses me. I have been a suspect—arrested as such, and put in prison. Oh, the horror and shame of it, and I as innocent as you! My husband is in Siberia—sent there rightfully, I suppose, according to the laws of this land. I have no children, thank God, but”—and red spots began to come out on her thin face—“it is not known to many here—but Carl is my nephew. A good boy once as ever the sun shone on. But they arrested him for something he never heard of, and nearly killedhim with the knout to make him confess what he knew nothing of. When satisfied that they could get nothing from him, they let him go, and he crept to me in the night, with his poor back all gashed and bleeding, and every particle of manhood crushed out of him. There is nothing like the knout administered wrongfully to take the pride from a man and make him a fiend. Carl is pretty bad now, and does not care. I am sorry he attacked you, and wonder that he did. He must have had too much vodka. You should not have come here, and the sooner you go, the better. Your friend is greatly upset.”
She looked at Mary, who was very white and very busy trying to keep herself from the children who were pressing round her, and who had been joined by other children from some quarter. Among them I recognized my hat, which I had discarded on the first day of my arrival. The same girl I had then seen with it on was wearing it, and had twisted a piece of faded blue tarleton around it in place of the ribbon and flower, which, I suppose, some other child was wearing. At sight of it, I laughed. The world seemed so small, with many wires converging to the same point, and just now to this neighborhood, where I knew I ought not to be. But I mustask the woman a question before I left, and, turning to her, I said: “Do you know Michel Seguin?”
“Only as a terror to the nihilists and thieves. I’ve never spoken to him,” she said. “I hear that, although he is quick to catch ’em, he is kind after they are caught. Very different from Paul Strigoff, who has come up from the scum of Moscow, and feels his importance as a gendarme, while Michel Seguin is a gentleman, and comes of a good family.”
“Do you know where he lives?” I asked her next, and she replied: “Yes; on the Nevsky. He has money, and his mother is a lady.”
“And did you ever know or hear of the Patoff family, who first owned the house? There was a Nicol Patoff, a young man. Did you ever hear of him?”
“Patoff?” she replied. “No, I don’t know them. They must have left before I came to St. Petersburg. The Seguins lived there then.”
“Thanks!” I said; “and now I really must go. Come, Mary.”
I stooped to help her up, and, before I got her to her feet and away from the woman, who was again offering her vodka, I was conscious that some new impulse had been given to the crowd, which had pressed disagreeablynear to me as I bent over Mary. The children began to scatter, and in the distance I saw my hat, worn hindside before, and bobbing up and down on the frowsy head of the peasant girl. The women, too, began to move off toward their own homes, while Chance started up, and, with a joyous bark, ran swiftly up the street, where a tall gendarme was coming toward us with rapid strides and swinging a little cane, which I had heard could, on occasion, make itself felt.
“Michel Seguin!” I almost screamed, as I clutched Mary’s arm and drew her along with me. “Oh, I am so glad,” I said, stretching out my disengaged hand to Michel, who took it, while with his other hand he relieved me of Mary, who, at sight of him, began to recover her strength and courage.
And so, without a word of inquiry or explanation, we walked away from that quarter to the Nevsky, which had never seemed so bright and pleasant as it did when we at last sat down upon a bench, with Michel between us, still holding our hands, as if he had us in custody.
“Now, tell me,” he said, “how came you in that quarter, of all others? It is no place to walk. What took you there?”
“My miserable curiosity,” I said, with a sob in myvoice. “I wanted to explore new places, and see all sorts and conditions of people.”
“I think you probably saw them,” he answered. “I reached home about noon. I saw you go by, but was too busy to speak to you. Knowing your fondness for long walks, I concluded you were taking one, but as time passed, and you did not return, I sent Chance to find you. But what happened to upset you so?”
It was Mary who began to tell the story. I could not. The thought of it made me faint again, and, without knowing it, I leaned rather heavily against Michel, while, in a voice half choked with nervous tears, Mary related our experience with the thief, and the part Chance had in it.
The dog seemed to know what she was saying, for he stamped his feet and shook his head, turned a somersault or two, and finally came and, putting his nose in his master’s lap, looked earnestly at him for commendation. “Good Chance,” was all the return he could get, for both the gendarme’s hands were in use, one holding me, the other holding Mary, while he listened with rapt attention, and, when she mentioned the name of the thief, he started and let go my hand.
“Carl Zimosky!” he repeated. “He is the most expertthief we have. I never knew him openly attack one in daylight before. Such things are not common. There are too many police around, besides the three in thebutkis.”
“Great good they did us!” I exclaimed. “I don’t believe they were on guard, or else they were asleep, and your fine policeman, Paul Strigoff, took his time to get to us, and, when he came, he was exceedingly insolent because I had let the thief go.”
“Paul Strigoff!” and Michel laughed; “and so you fell in with him, too! You did have an adventure! Paul and Carl! I wish myself you could have kept the latter till we found whether he had my watch.”
“Your watch!” I repeated, remembering, suddenly, what I had heard of his house being robbed. “Was your house really entered? Strigoff said so.”
“Yes,” he answered. “When I reached home, I found the servants in a great commotion. My house had been entered by some one, a quantity of silver taken, and a gold watch, which I prized very highly, because—because——” he hesitated, then went on: “It is an American watch, made in Waltham, and, you know, they are valuable. It was Nicol’s. He brought it home with him,and it has ‘Ridgefield’ on it, and the date when he bought it.”
“How came you by it?” I asked, rather sharply, and he replied: “Just as I came by the house and the other articles. All fair, as I once told you. The Patoffs were not cheated.”
Here was a new complication, with Nicol in it. I remembered the watch perfectly. It was bought at a jeweler’s in Ridgefield, who kept only the best wares. Nicol had seemed rather proud of it and consulted it frequently if the day was hot, the lessons hard and his pupils stupid and anxious to be free.
“And you suspect Carl Zimosky?” I asked, in an unsteady voice.
“Yes, we always suspect him. He is what you Americans call a bad egg—into one scrape as soon as he is out of another.”
“And I let him go!” I said. “He begged so hard and looked so scared; but I’ll try and get the watch for you if he has it.”
“You!” and he laughed derisively. “Will you turn detective, and go into the dives after him? He eludes us every time.”
“No,” I answered, thinking of the tired-faced woman,his aunt, whom they called Ursula. I should work through her, but I did not say so, as I did not wish to bring her into the trouble if I could help it.
“I do not know for sure that he has the watch, but I am sure you cannot get it if he has,” the gendarme said.
“Let me try, and don’t go after him until I have given him up,” I said. “He has been in prison once and under the knout, and his back is all cut and scarred. It is horrible, and I hate the whole system, and am glad we are going away in a few days.”
“Going away so soon?” the gendarme asked, and in his voice there was genuine regret such as we feel when parting from a friend.
“Yes,” I answered, not quite in the tone I had at first assumed.
I could not understand the influence this man had over me, or the sense of restfulness I felt as I walked beside him on the Nevsky, till we reached his house, which, at his invitation, we entered, hearing from the porter and a head servant an account of the robbery, which was so adroitly done as to leave in their minds no doubt that the thief was Carl Zimosky.
“But we’ll get him, we’ll get him,” the porter said, witha shake of his gray head, “and the knout will soon make him give up the plunder, if he has it.”
I shuddered, but made no remark. I meant to get the watch, if Carl had it, though how I scarcely knew. It was growing late, and I was too tired to walk the remaining distance to the hotel. I would take adrosky, I said, and, with Mary, was soon being hurled along the street in an old vehicle and at a pace which threatened the dislocation of our limbs, if indeed we were not thrown into the street.
If anyone at the hotel had heard of the robbery at Michel Seguin’s house, nothing was said of it, and by mutual consent Mary and I kept our own counsel with regard to our adventure. We had had a long walk and been in a queer part of the city, we said, when questioned, and that was all. I was more tired and excited than I had ever been in my life, and I made my fatigue an excuse for retiring early to my room, where I lay awake far into the night, devising means for getting Michel’s watch, if possible, from the hands of Carl Zimosky, if he had it, or through him from the one who did have it.