The Author, Disguised
The Author, Disguised
And then a miracle occurred!
You know, of course, the conundrum: “Why is paper money preferable to coin?”—the answer being, “Because when you put it in your pocket you double it, and when you take it out you find it in creases.” Well, that is what literally did occur with my exemption certificate! While holding it in my hands and ruffling the edges, the paper all at once appeared to move of itself, and, rather like protozoa propagating its species, most suddenly and unexpectedly divided, revealing to my astonished eyes not one exemption certificate—but two!
Two of the printed sheets had by some means become so closely stuck together that it was only when the edges were ruffled that they fell apart, and neither the doctor nor Zorinsky had noted it. Here was the means of eluding Zorinsky by filling in another paper! How shall I describe my joy at the unlooked-for discovery! The nervous reaction was so intense that, much to my own amusement, I found tears streaming down my cheeks. I laughed and felt like the Count of Monte Cristo unearthing his treasure—until, sobering down a little, I recollected that the blank form was quite useless until I had another passport to back it up.
That night I thrashed out my position thoroughly and determined on a line of action. Zorinsky, I reflected, was a creature whom in ordinary life I should have been inclined to shun like the pest. I record here only those incidents and conversations which bear on my story, but when not discussing “business” he lavished a good deal of gratuitous information about his private life, particularly ofregimental days, which was revolting. But in the abnormal circumstances in which I lived, to “cut” with anybody with whom I had once formed a close association was very difficult, and in Zorinsky’s case doubly so. Suppose he saw me in the street afterward, or heard of me through any of his numerous connections? Pursuing his “hobby” ofcontre-espionnagehe would surely not fail to follow the movements of a star of the first magnitude like myself. There was no course open but to remain on good terms and profit to the full by the information I obtained from him and the people I occasionally met at his house—information which proved to be invariably correct. But he must learn nothing of my other movements, and in this respect I felt the newly discovered blank exemption form would surely be of service. I had only to procure another passport from somewhere or other.
What was Zorinsky’s real attitude toward Melnikoff, I wondered? How well had they known each other? If only I had some means of checking—but I knew none of Melnikoff’s connections in Russia. He had lived at a hospital. He had spoken of a doctor friend. I had already twice seen the woman at the lodge to which he had directed me. I thought hard for a moment.
Yes, good idea! On the morrow I would resort once more to Melnikoff’s hospital on The Islands, question the woman again, and, if possible, seek an interview with the doctor. Perhaps he could shed light on the matter. Thus deciding, I threw myself dressed on the bed and fell asleep.
Some three weeks later, on a cold Sunday morning in January, I sat in the Doctor’s study at his small flat in one of the big houses at the end of the Kamenostrovsky Prospect. The news had just arrived that the German Communist leaders, Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxembourg, had been killed in Berlin, the former in attempted flight, the latter mobbed by an incensed crowd. Nobody in Russia had any idea who these two people were, but their deaths caused consternation in the Communist camp, for they had been relied upon to pull off a Red revolution in Germany and thus accelerate the wave of Bolshevism westward across Europe.
Little known as Liebknecht and Luxembourg had been outside Germany until the time of their death, in the hierarchy of Bolshevist saints they were placed second only to Karl Marx and Engels, the Moses and Aaron of the Communist Party. Russians are noted for their veneration of ikons, representing to them the memory of saintly lives, but their religious devotion is equalled by that of the Bolsheviks. Though he does not cross himself, the true Bolshevik bows down in spirit to the images of Marx and kindred revolutionaries with an obsequiousness unexcelled by devotees of the church. The difference in the two creeds lies in this: that whereas the orthodox Christian venerates saintly lives according to their degree of unworldliness, individual goodness, and spiritual sanctity, theBolsheviks revere their saints for the vehemence with which they promoted the class war, fomented discontent, and preached world-wide revolution.
To what extent humanity suffered as the result of the decease of the two German Communists, I am unable to judge, but their loss was regarded by the revolutionary leaders as a catastrophe of the first magnitude. The official Press had heavy headlines about it, and those who read the papers asked one another who the two individuals could have been. Having studied the revolutionary movement to some extent, I was better able to appreciate the mortification of the ruling party, and was therefore interested in the great public demonstration announced for that day in honour of the dead.
My new friend, the Doctor, was both puzzled and amused by my attitude.
“I can understand your being here as an intelligence officer,” he said. “After all, your Government has to have someone to keep them informed, though it must be unpleasant for you. But why you should take it into your head to go rushing round to all the silly meetings and demonstrations the way you do is beyond me. And the stuff you read! You have only been here three or four times, but you have left a train of papers and pamphlets enough to open a propaganda department.”
The Doctor, who I learned from the woman at the lodge was Melnikoff’s uncle, was a splendid fellow. As a matter of fact, he had sided wholeheartedly with the revolution in March, 1917, and held very radical views, but he thought more than spoke about them. His nephew, Melnikoff, on the contrary, together with a considerable group of officers, had opposed the revolution from the outset, but the Doctor had not quarrelledwith them, realizing one cardinal truth the Bolsheviks appear to fail to grasp, namely, that the criterion whereby men must ultimately be judged is not politics, but character.
The Doctor had a young and very intelligent friend named Shura, who had been a bosom friend of Melnikoff’s. Shura was a law student. He resembled the Doctor in his radical sympathies but differed from both him and Melnikoff in that he was given to philosophizing and probing deeply beneath the surface of things. Many were the discussions we had together, when, some weeks later, I came to know Shura well.
“Communist speeches,” he used to say, “often sound like a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury signifying nothing. But behind the interminable jargon there lie both an impulse and an ideal. The ideal is a proletarian millennium, but the impulse is not love of the worker, but hatred of the bourgeois. The Bolshevik believes that if a perfect proletarian state be forcibly established by destroying the bourgeoisie, the perfect proletarian citizen will automatically result! There will be no crime, no prisons, no need of government. But by persecuting liberals and denying freedom of thought the Bolsheviks are driving independent thinkers into the camp of that very section of society whose provocative conduct caused Bolshevism! That is why I will fight to oust the Bolsheviks,” said Shura, “they are impediments in the path of the revolution.”
It had been a strange interview when I first called on the Doctor and announced myself as a friend of Melnikoff’s. He sat bolt upright, smiling affably, and obviously ready for every conceivable contingency. The last thing in the world he was prepared to do wasto believe me. I told him all I could about his nephew and he evidently thought I was very clever to know so much. He was polite but categorical. No, sir, he knew nothing whatsoever of his nephew’s movements, it was good of me to interest myself in his welfare, but he himself had ceased to be interested. I might possibly be an Englishman, as I said, but he had never heard his nephew mention an Englishman. He had no knowledge nor any desire for information as to his nephew’s past, present, or future, and if his nephew had engaged in counter-revolutionary activities it was his own fault. I could not but admire the placidity and suavity with which he said all this, and cursed the disguise which made me look so unlike what I wanted the Doctor to see.
“Do you speak English?” I said at last, getting exasperated.
I detected a twinge—ever so slight. “A little,” he replied.
“Then, damn it all, man,” I exclaimed in English, rising and striking my chest with my fist—rather melodramatically, it must have seemed—“why the devil can’t you see Iaman Englishman and not aprovocateur? Melnikoff must have told you something about me. Except for me he wouldn’t have come back here. Didn’t he tell you how we stayed together at Viborg, how he helped dress me, how he drank all my whisky, how——?”
The Doctor all at once half rose from his seat. The urbane, fixed smile that had not left his lips since the beginning of the interview suddenly burst into a half-laugh.
“Was ityouwho gave him the whisky?” he broke in, in Russian.
“Of course it was,” I replied. “I——”
“That settles it,” he said, excitedly. “Sit down; I’ll be back in a moment.”
He left the room and walked quickly to the front door. Half suspecting treachery, I peered out into the hall and feeling for the small revolver I carried, looked round to see if there were any way of escape in an emergency. The Doctor opened the front door, stepped on to the landing, looked carefully up and down the stairs, and, returning, closed all the other doors in the hall before re-entering the study. He walked over to where I stood and looked me straight in the face.
“Why on earth didn’t you come before?” he exclaimed, speaking in a low voice.
We rapidly became friends. Melnikoff’s disappearance had been a complete mystery to him, a mystery which he had no means of solving. He had never heard of Zorinsky, but names meant nothing. He thought it strange that so high a price should be demanded for Melnikoff, and thought I had been unwise to give it all in advance under any circumstances; but he was none the less overjoyed to hear of the prospects of his release.
After every visit to Zorinsky I called on the Doctor to tell him the latest news. On this particular morning I had told him how the evening before, in a manner which I disliked intensely, Zorinsky had shelved the subject, giving evasive answers. We had passed the middle of January already, yet apparently there was no information whatever as to Melnikoff’s case.
“There is another thing, too, that disquiets me, Doctor,” I added. “Zorinsky shows undue curiosity as to where I go when I am not at his house. He happens to know the passport on which I am living,and examination of papers being so frequent, I wish I could get another one. Have you any idea what Melnikoff would do in such circumstances?”
The Doctor paced up and down the room.
“Would you mind telling me the name?” he asked.
I showed him all my documents, including the exemption certificate, explaining how I had received them.
“Well, well, your Mr. Zorinsky certainly is a useful friend to have, I must say,” he observed, looking at the certificate, and wagging his head knowingly. “By the way, does he cost you much, if one may ask?”
“He himself? Nothing at all, or very little. Besides the sixty thousand for Melnikoff,” I calculated, “I have given him a few thousand for odd expenses connected with the case; I insist on paying for meals; I gave his wife an expensive bouquet at New Year with which she was very pleased; then I have given him money for the relief of Melnikoff’s sister, and——”
“For Melnikoff’s sister?” ejaculated the Doctor. “But he hasn’t got one!”
Vot tibie ná!No sister—then where did the money go? I suddenly remembered Zorinsky had once asked if I could give him English money. I told the Doctor.
“Look out, my friend, look out,” he said. “Your friend is certainly a clever and a useful man. But I’m afraid you will have to go on paying for Melnikoff’s non-existent sister. It would not do for him to know you had found out. As for your passport, I will ask Shura. By the way,” he added, “it is twelve o’clock. Will you not be late for your precious demonstration?”
I hurried to leave. “I will let you know how things go,” I said. “I will be back in two or three days.”
The morning was a frosty one with a bitter wind. No street-cars ran on Sundays and I walked into town to the Palace Square, the great space in front of the Winter Palace, famous for another January Sunday—“Bloody Sunday”—thirteen years before. Much had been made in the Press of the present occasion, and it appeared to be taken for granted that the proletariat would surge to bear testimony to their grief for the fallen German Communists. But round the base of a red-bedizened tribune in the centre of the square there clustered a mere handful of people and two rows of soldiers, stamping to keep their feet warm. The crowd consisted of the sturdy Communist veterans who organized the demonstration and onlookers who always join any throng to see whatever is going on.
As usual the proceedings started late, and the small but patient crowd was beginning to dwindle before the chief speakers arrived. A group of commonplace-looking individuals, standing on the tribune, lounged and smoked cigarettes, apparently not knowing exactly what to do with themselves. I pushed myself forward to be as near the speakers as possible.
To my surprise I noticed Dmitri, Stepanovna’s nephew, among the soldiers who stood blowing on their hands and looking miserable. I moved a few steps away, so that he might not see me. I was afraid he would make some sign of recognition which might lead to questions by his comrades, and I had no idea who they might be. But I was greatly amused at seeing him at a demonstration of this sort.
At length an automobile dashed up, and amid faint cheers and to the accompaniment of bugles, Zinoviev, president of the Petrograd Soviet, alighted andmounted the tribune. Zinoviev, whose real name is Apfelbaum, is a very important person in Bolshevist Russia. He is considered one of the greatest orators of the Communist Party, and now occupies the proud position of president of the Third International, the institution that is to effect the world revolution.
It is to his oratorical skill rather than any administrative ability that Zinoviev owes his prominence. His rhetoric is of a peculiar order. He is unrivalled in his appeal to the ignorant mob, but, judging by his speeches, logic is unknown to him, and on no thinking audience could he produce any impression beyond that of wonderment at his uncommon command of language, ready though cheap witticisms, and inexhaustible fund of florid and vulgar invective. Zinoviev is, in fact, the consummate gutter-demagogue. He is a coward, shirked office in November, 1917, fearing the instability of the Bolshevist coup, has since been chief advocate of all the insaner aspects of Bolshevism, and is always the first to lose his head and fly into a panic when danger-clouds appear on any horizon.
Removing his hat, Zinoviev approached the rail, and stood there in his rich fur coat until someone down below gave a signal to cheer. Then he began to speak in the following strain:
“Comrades! Wherefore are we gathered here to-day? What mean this tribune and this concourse of people? Is it to celebrate a triumph of world revolution, to hail another conquest over the vicious ogre of Capitalism? Alas, no! To-day we mourn the two greatest heroes of our age, murdered deliberately, brutally, and in cold blood by blackguard capitalist agents. The German Government, consisting of the social-traitor Scheidemann and other supposed Socialists, the scum and dregs of humanity, have soldthemselves like Judas Iscariot for thirty shekels of silver to the German bourgeoisie, and at the command of the capitalists ordered their paid hirelings foully to murder the two chosen representatives of the German workers and peasants ...” and so on.
I never listened to Zinoviev without recalling a meeting in the summer of 1917 when he was the chief speaker. He had just returned to Russia with a group of other Bolshevist leaders (very few of whom were present during the revolution) and was holding incendiary meetings in out-of-the-way places. He was thin and slim and looked the typical Jewish student of any Russian university. But after a year’s fattening on the Russian proletariat he had swelled not only politically but physically, and his full, handsome features and flowing bushy hair spoke of anything but privation.
Contrary to custom, Zinoviev’s speech was short. It must have been cold, speaking in the chilly wind, and in any case there were not many people to talk to.
The next speaker was more novel—Herr Otto Pertz, president of the German Soviet of Petrograd. Why a German Soviet continued to live and move and have its being in Petrograd, or what its functions were, nobody seemed to know. The comings and goings ofunsere deutsche Genossenappeared to be above criticism and were always a mystery. Herr Otto Pertz was tall, clean shaven, Germanly tidy, and could not speak Russian.
“Genossen! heute feiern wir——” he began, and proceeded to laud the memory of the fallen heroes and to foretell the coming social revolution in Germany. The dastardly tyrants of Berlin, insolently styling themselves Socialists, would shortly be overthrown.Kapitalismus,Imperialismus, in fact everything butKommunismus, would be demolished. He had information that within a week or twoSpartacus(the German Bolshevist group), with all Germany behind it, would successfully seize power in Berlin and join in a triumphant and indissoluble alliance with the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic.
As Otto Pertz commenced his oration a neatly dressed little lady of about fifty, who stood at my side near the foot of the tribune, looked up eagerly at the speaker. Her eyes shone brightly and her breath came quickly. Seeing I had noticed her she said timidly, “Spricht er nicht gut? Sagen Sie doch, spricht er nicht gut?”
To which I of course replied, “Sehr gut,” and she relapsed bashfully into admiration of Otto, murmuring now and again, “Ach! es ist doch wahr, nicht?” with which sentiment also I would agree.
The crowd listened patiently, as the Russian crowd always listens, whoever speaks, and on whatever subject. The soldiers shivered and wondered what the speaker was talking about. His speech was not translated.
But when Otto Pertz ceased there was a commotion in the throng. For some moments I was at a loss as to what was in progress, until at last a passage was made and, borne on valiant Communist shoulders, a guy, the special attraction of the day, was produced. The effigy, made of pasteboard, represented a ferocious-looking German with Kaiser-like moustachios, clothed in evening dress, and bearing across its chest in large letters on cardboard the name of the German Socialist,
At the same time an improvised gallows was thrust over the balustrade of the tribune. Amid curses,jeers, and execrations, the moustachioed effigy was raised aloft. Eager hands attached the dangling loop and there it hung, most abject, most melancholy, encased in evening dress, and black trousers with hollow extremities flapping in the breeze.
The crowd awoke and tittered and even the soldiers smiled. Dmitri, I could see, was laughing outright. This was after all worth coming to see. Kerosene was poured on the dangling Scheidemann and he was set alight. There were laughter, howls, and fanfares. Zinoviev, in tragic pose, with uplifted arm and pointed finger, cried hoarsely, “Thus perish traitors!” The bugles blew. The people, roused with delight, cheered lustily. Only the wretched Scheidemann was indifferent to the interest he was arousing, as with a stony glare on his cardboard face he soared aloft amid sparks and ashes into eternity.
Crowd psychology, I mused as I walked away, has been an important factor on all public occasions since the revolution, but appreciated to the full only by the Bolsheviks. Everyone who was in Russia in 1917 and who attended political meetings when free speech became a possibility remembers how a speaker would get up and speak, loudly applauded by the whole audience; then another would rise and say the precise opposite, rewarded with equally vociferous approbation; followed again by a third who said something totally at variance with the first two, and how the enthusiasm would increase in proportion to the uncertainty as to who was actually right. The crowds were just like little children. Totally unaccustomed to free speech, they appeared to imagine that anybody who spoke mustipso factobe right. But just when the people, after the Bolshevistcoup d’état, were beginning to demand reason in public utterance and deeds insteadof promises, down came a super-Tsarist Bolshevist censorship like a huge candle-snuffer and clapping itself on the flame of public criticism, snuffed it out altogether.
Public demonstrations, however, were made an important item in the curriculum of the Bolshevist administration, and soon became as compulsory as military service. I record the above one not because of its intrinsic interest (it really had very little), but because it was, I believe, one of the last occasions on which it was left to the public to make the demonstration a success or not, and regiments were merely “invited.”
I made my way to Stepanovna’s in the hope of meeting Dmitri. He came in toward the close of the afternoon, and I asked him if he had enjoyed the demonstration.
“Too cold,” he replied; “they ought to have had it on a warmer day.”
“Did you come voluntarily?”
“Why, yes.” He pulled out of the spacious pocket of his tunic a parcel wrapped up in newspaper, and unwrapping it, disclosed a pound of bread. “We were told we should get this if we came. It has just been doled out.”
Stepanovna’s eyes opened wide. Deeply interested, she asked when the next demonstration was going to be.
“Why didn’t more soldiers come, then?” I asked.
“Not enough bread, I suppose,” said Dmitri. “We have been getting it irregularly of late. But we have a new commissar who is a good fellow. They say in the regiment he gets everything for us first. He talks to us decently, too. I am beginning to like him. Perhaps he is not one like the rest.”
“By the way, Dmitri,” I said, “do you happen to know who those people were for whom we demonstrated to-day?”
From the depths of his crumb-filled pocket Dmitri extracted a crumpled and soiled pamphlet. Holding it to the light he slowly read out the title: “Who were Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxembourg?”
“We were each given one yesterday,” he explained, “after an agitator had made a long speech to us. Nobody listened to the agitator—some Jew or other—but the commissar gave me this. I read little nowadays, but I think I will read it when I have time.”
“And the speakers and the guy?” I queried.
“I didn’t notice the speakers. One of them spoke not in our way—German, someone said. But the guy! That was funny! My, Stepanovna, you ought to have seen it! How it floated up into the air! You would have split your sides laughing. Who was it supposed to represent, by the way?”
I explained how the revolution in Germany had resulted in the downfall of the Kaiser and the formation of a radical Cabinet with a Socialist—Scheidemann—at its head. Scheidemann was the guy to-day, I said, for reasons which I presumed he would find stated in “Who were Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxembourg?”
“But if the Kaiser is out, why do our Bolsheviks burn—what’s his name——?”
“Ah, but, Dmitri,” I put in, “if you had understood the German speaker to-day, you would have heard him tell how there is shortly to be another revolution in Germany like that which happened here in November, 1917, and they will set up a Soviet Government like Lenin’s.”
As our conversation proceeded, Stepanovna andVaria stopped their work to listen, their interest grew apace, and at last they hung on to every word as if it were of profound significance. When I repeated the substance of Otto Pertz’s predictions, all three of my companions were listening spellbound and with mouths agape. There was a long pause, which at length Stepanovna broke.
“Is it really possible,” she exclaimed, slowly, and apparently in utter bewilderment, “that the Germans—are—such—fools?”
“Evasive, Doctor, very evasive,” I said, as we sat over tea and a few dry biscuits the Doctor had procured from somewhere. “Yesterday evening he gave me some interesting information about industrial developments, alteration of railway administration, and changes in the Red fleet; but the moment Melnikoff is mentioned then it is, ‘Oh, Melnikoff? in a day or two I think we may know definitely,’ or ‘My informant is out of town,’ and so on.”
“Perhaps there is a hitch somewhere,” suggested the Doctor. “I suppose there is nothing to do but wait. By the way, you wanted a passport, didn’t you? How will that suit you?”
I have forgotten the precise wording of the paper he handed me, for I had to destroy it later, but it was an ordinary certificate of identification, in the name of Alexander Vasilievitch Markovitch, aged 33, clerical assistant at the head Postal-Telegraph Office. There was no photograph attached, but in view of the strict requirements regarding passports, which included their frequent renewal (except in certain cases no passports might be made out for more than two months), and the difficulty of getting photographs, the latter were dropping out of general use.
“Shura procured it,” the Doctor explained. “A friend of his, by name Markov, arrived recently from Moscow to work at the Telegraph Office. A week later he heard his wife was seriously ill and got special permission to return. A week in Petrograd was enough for him anyway, for living is much better in Moscow, so he doesn’t intend to come back. Shura asked him for his passport and after Markov had got his railroad pass and paper showing he was authorized to return to Moscow, he gave it him. If they ask for it in Moscow, he will say he has lost it. He would have to have a new one anyway, since a Petrograd one is useless there. My typewriter at the hospital has the same type as this, so we altered the date a little, added ‘itch’ to the name—and there you are, if you wish, a ready-made postal official.”
“What about clothing?” I said. “I don’t look much like a postal official.”
“There is something more important than that. What about military service?”
From my pocket I produced a new pamphlet on the soviet system. Opening a pocket of the uncut leaves at a certain page, I drew forth my blank exemption certificate and exhibited it to the Doctor.
“What are you, a magician?” he asked admiringly. “Or is this another gift from your friend Z.?”
“The certificates were born twins,” I said. “Zorinsky was accoucheur to the first, I to the second.”
In an hour I had filled in the blank exemption form with all particulars relating to Alexander Vasilievitch Markovitch. Tracing the signatures carefully, and inserting a recent date, I managed to produce a document indistinguishable as regards authenticity from the original, and thus was possessed of two sets of documents, one in the name of Krylenko for the benefitof Zorinsky, the other in that of Markovitch for presentation in the streets and possible registration.
Considering once more the question of uniform I recalled that at my own rooms where I had lived for years I had left a variety of clothing when last in Petrograd six or eight months previously. The question was: How could I gain admittance to my rooms, disguised as I was and with an assumed name? Furthermore, a telephone call having elicited no response, I had no idea whether the housekeeper whom I had left was still there, nor whether the apartment had been raided, locked up, or occupied by workmen. All these things I was curious to know, quite apart from obtaining clothing.
I enlisted the services of Varia as scout. Varia was the first person to whom I confided my English name, and doing it with due solemnity, and with severe cautionings that not even Stepanovna should be told, I could see that the girl was impressed with my confidence in her. Armed with a brief note to my housekeeper purporting to be written by a fictitious friend of mine, and warned to turn back unless everything were precisely as I described, Varia set out on a voyage of discovery.
She returned to impart the information that the front door of the house being locked she had entered by the yard, had encountered nobody on the backstairs, and that in answer to persistent ringing a woman, whom I recognized by the description as my housekeeper, had opened the kitchen door on a short chain, and, peering suspiciously through the chink, had at first vehemently denied any acquaintance with any English people at all. On perusing the note from my non-existent friend, however, she admitted that an Englishman of my name had formerly lived there, but she had thestrictest injunctions from him to admit nobody to the flat.
Pursuing my instructions, Varia informed the housekeeper that my friend, Mr. Markovitch, had just arrived from Moscow. He was busy to-day, she said, and had sent her round to inquire after my affairs, but would call himself at an early opportunity.
The one article of clothing which I frequently changed and of which I had a diverse stock was headgear. It is surprising how headdress can impart character (or the lack of it) to one’s appearance. Donning my most bourgeois fur cap, polishing my leather breeches and brushing my jacket, I proceeded on the following day to my former home, entering by the yard as Varia had done and ringing at the back door. The house appeared deserted, for I saw no one in the yard, nor heard any sounds of life. When, in reply to persistent ringing, the door was opened on the chain, I saw my housekeeper peering through the chink just as Varia had described. My first impulse was to laugh, it seemed so ridiculous to be standing on one’s own backstairs, pretending to be someone else, and begging admittance to one’s own rooms by the back door.
I hadn’t time to laugh, however. The moment my housekeeper saw the apparition on the stairway she closed the door again promptly and rebolted it, and it was only after a great deal of additional knocking and ringing that at last the door was once again timidly opened just a tiny bit.
Greeting the woman courteously, I announced myself as Mr. Markovitch, close personal friend and school companion of the Englishman who formerly had occupied these rooms. My friend, I said, was now in England and regretted the impossibility of returningto Russia under present conditions. I had recently received a letter from him, I declared, brought somehow across the frontier, in which, sending his greetings to Martha Timofeievna (the housekeeper), he had requested me at the earliest opportunity to visit his home and report on its condition. To reduce Martha Timofeievna’s suspicions, I assured her that before the war I had been a frequent visitor to this flat, and gave numerous data which left no doubt whatsoever in her mind that I was at least well acquainted with the arrangement of the rooms, and with the furniture and pictures that had formerly been in them. I added, of course, that on the last occasion when I had seen my friend, he had spoken of his new housekeeper in terms of the highest praise, and assured me again in his letter that I should find her good-mannered, hospitable, and obliging.
The upshot was that, though Martha Timofeievna was at first categorical in her refusal to admit any one to the flat, she ultimately agreed to do so if I could show her the actual letter written by “Monsieur Dukes,” requesting permission for his friend to be admitted.
I told her I would bring it to her that very afternoon, and, highly satisfied with the result of the interview, I retired at once to the nearest convenient place, which happened to be the Journalist’s, to write it.
“Dear Sasha,” I wrote in Russian, using the familiar name for Alexander (my Christian name according to my new papers), “I can scarcely hope you will ever receive this, yet on the chance that you may——etc.,”—and I proceeded to give a good deal of imaginary family news. Toward the end I said, “By the way, when you are in Petrograd, please go to my flat andsee Martha Timofeievna——etc.,” and I gave instructions as to what “Sasha” was to do, and permission to take anything he needed. “I write in Russian,” I concluded, “so that in case of necessity you may show this letter to M. T. She is a good woman and will do everything for you. Give her my hearty greetings and tell her I hope to return at the first opportunity. Write if ever you can. Good-bye. Yours ever, Pavlusha.”
I put the letter in an envelope, addressed it to “Sasha Markovitch,” sealed it up, tore it open again, crumpled it, and put it in my pocket.
The same afternoon I presented myself once more at my back door.
Martha Timofeievna’s suspicions had evidently already been considerably allayed, for she smiled amiably even before perusing the letter I put into her hand, and at once admitted me as far as the kitchen. Here she laboriously read the letter through (being from the Baltic provinces she spoke Russian badly and read with difficulty), and, paying numerous compliments to the author, who she hoped would soon return because she didn’t know what she was going to do about the flat or how long she would be able to keep on living there, she led me into the familiar rooms.
Everything was in a state of confusion. Many of the pictures were torn down, furniture was smashed, and in the middle of the floor of the dining-room lay a heap of junk, consisting of books, papers, pictures, furniture, and torn clothing. In broken Russian Martha Timofeievna told me how first there had been a search, and when she had said that an Englishman had lived there the Reds had prodded and torn everything with their bayonets. Then a family of working people had taken possession, fortunately, however, not expelling her from her room. But the flat had notbeen to their liking, and, deserting it soon after, they took a good many things with them and left everything else upside down.
Between them, the Reds and the uninvited occupants had left very little that could be of use to me. I found no boots or overclothing, but among the litter I discovered some underclothing of which I was glad. I also found an old student hat, which was exactly what I wanted for my postal uniform. I put it in my pocket and, tying the other things in a parcel, said I would send Varia for them next day.
While I was disentangling with my housekeeper’s aid the heap of stuff on the floor I came upon my own photograph taken two or three years before. For the first time I fully and clearly realized how complete was my present disguise, how absolutely different I now appeared in a beard, long hair, and glasses. I passed the photo to Martha Timofeievna.
“That is a good likeness,” I said. “He hasn’t altered one bit.”
“Yes,” she replied. “Was he not a nice man? It is dreadful that he had to go away. I wonder where he is now and what he is doing?”
“I wonder,” I repeated, diving again into the muck on the floor. To save my life I could not have looked at Martha Timofeievna at that moment and kept a straight face.
Failing to obtain an overcoat from the remnant of my belongings, I searched the markets and from a destitute gentleman of aristocratic mien procured a shabby black coat with a worn velvet collar. In this and my student hat I was the “complete postal official.” I adopted this costume for daytime purposes, but before every visit to Zorinsky I went to “No 5,” where I kept what few belongings I possessed,and changed, visiting Zorinsky only in the attire in which he was accustomed to see me.
As the end of January approached my suspicion that Zorinsky would not secure Melnikoff’s release grew. Once or twice he had not even mentioned the subject, talking energetically in his usual vivacious manner about other things. He was as entertaining as ever, and invariably imparted interesting political news, but if I broached the subject of Melnikoff he shelved it at once.
So I resolved, in spite of risks, to see if I could obtain through the Policeman information as to Melnikoff’s case. I had not seen the Policeman since I had returned from Finland, so I told him I had been delayed in that country and had only just come back. Without telling him who Melnikoff was, I imparted to him the data regarding the latter’s arrest, and what I had learned “through accidental channels” as to his imprisonment. I did not let him know my concern, lest he should be inclined purposely to give a favourable report, but charged him to be strict and accurate in his investigation, and, in the event of failing to learn anything, not to fear to admit it.
About a week later, when I ‘phoned to him, he said “he had received an interesting letter on family matters.” It was with trepidation that I hurried to his house, struggling to conceal my eager anticipation as I mounted the stairs, followed by the gaze of the leering Chinaman.
The little Policeman held a thin strip of paper in his hand.
“Dmitri Dmitrievitch Melnikoff,” he read. “Real name Nicholas Nicholaievitch N——?”
“Yes,” I said.
“He was shot between the 15th and 20th of January,” said the Policeman.
Meanwhile, as time progressed, I made new acquaintances at whose houses I occasionally put up for a night. Over most of them I pass in silence. I accepted their hospitality as a Russian emigrant who was being searched for by the Bolsheviks, a circumstance which in itself was a recommendation. But if I felt I could trust people I did not hesitate to reveal my nationality, my reception then being more cordial still. I often reflected with satisfaction that my mode of living resembled that of many revolutionists, not only during the reign of Tsarism, but also under the present régime. People of every shade of opinion from Monarchist to Socialist-Revolutionary dodged and evaded the police agents of the Extraordinary Commission, endeavouring either to flee from the country or to settle down unobserved under new names in new positions.
One of my incidental hosts whom I particularly remember, a friend of the Journalist and a school inspector by profession, was full of enterprise and enthusiasm for a scheme he propounded for including gardening and such things in the regular school curriculum of his circuit. His plans were still regarded with some mistrust by those in power, for his political prejudices were known, but he none the less had hope that the Communists would allow him to introduce his innovations, which I believe he eventually did successfully.
The Journalist was promoted to the position ofdieloproizvoditelof his department, a post giving him a negligible rise of salary, but in which practically all official papers passed through his hands. At his own initiative he used to abstract papers he thought would be of interest to me, restoring them before their absence could be discovered. Some of the things he showed me were illuminating, others useless. But good, bad, or indifferent, he always produced them with a sly look and with his finger at the side of his nose, as if the information they contained must be of the utmost consequence.
I persuaded him to sell off some of his books as a subsidiary means of subsistence, and we called a Jew in, who haggled long and hard. The Journalist was loth to do this, but I refused ever to give him more than the cost of his fuel, over which also I exerted a control of Bolshevist severity. He had no conception whatever of relative values, and attached though he was to me I thought I sometimes detected in his eye a look which said with unspeakable contempt: “You miserly Englishman!”
I was unfortunate in losing Maria as a regular companion and friend. She returned to Marsh’s country farm in the hope of saving at least something from destruction, and visited town but rarely. In her place there came to live at the empty flat “No. 5” the younger of the two stable-boys, a dull but decent youth who had not joined the looters. This boy did his best no doubt to keep things in order, but tidiness and cleanliness were not his peculiar weaknesses. He could not understand why glasses or spoons should be washed, or why even in an untenanted flat tables and chairs should occasionally be dusted. Once, the tea he had made me tasting unusually acrid,I went into the kitchen to investigate the tea-pot. On removing the lid I found it to be half full of dead beetles.
Stepanovna continued to be a good friend. Dmitri’s regiment was removed to a town in the interior, and Dmitri, reluctant though he was to leave the capital, docilely followed, influenced largely by the new regimental commissar who had succeeded in making himself popular—a somewhat rare achievement amongst commissars. Even Stepanovna admitted this unusual circumstance, allowing that the commissar was aporiadotchny tchelovziek,i. e.a decent person, “although he was a Communist,” and she thus acquiesced in Dmitri’s departure.
It was in Stepanovna’s company that I first witnessed the extraordinary spectacle of an armed raid by the Bolshevist authorities on a public market. Running across her in the busy Siennaya Square one morning I found she had been purchasing meat, which was a rare luxury. She had an old black shawl over her head and carried a bast basket on her arm.
“Where did you get the meat?” I asked. “I will buy some too.”
“Don’t,” she said, urgently. “In the crowd they are whispering that there is going to be a raid.”
“What sort of a raid?”
“On the meat, I suppose. Yesterday and to-day the peasants have been bringing it in and I have got a little. I don’t want to lose it. They say the Reds are coming.”
Free-trading being clearly opposed to the principles of Communism, it was officially forbidden and denounced as “speculation.” But no amount of restriction could suppress it, and the peasants brought food in to the hungry townspeople despite all obstaclesand sold it at their own prices. The only remedy the authorities had for this “capitalist evil” was armed force, and even that was ineffective.
The meat was being sold by the peasants in a big glass-covered shed. One of these sheds was burnt down in 1919, and the only object that remained intact was an ikon in the corner. Thousands came to see the ikon that had been “miraculously” preserved, but it was hastily taken away by the authorities. The ikon had apparently been overlooked, for it was the practice of the Bolsheviks to remove all religious symbols from public places.
I moved toward the building to make my purchase, but Stepanovna tugged me by the arm.
“Don’t be mad,” she exclaimed. “Don’t you realize, if there is a raid, they will arrest everybody?”
She pulled me down to speak in my ear.
“And what about your...? I am sure ... your papers ... are....”
“Of course they are,” I laughed. “But you don’t expect a clown of a Red guard to see the difference, do you?”
I made up my mind to get rid of Stepanovna and come back later for some meat, but all at once a commotion arose in the crowd over the way and people began running out of the shed. Round the corner, from the side of the Ekaterina Canal, appeared a band of soldiers in sheepskin caps and brown-grey tunics, with fixed bayonets. The exits from the building were quickly blocked. Fugitives fled in all directions, the women shrieking and hugging their baskets and bundles, and looking back as they ran to see if they were pursued.
Stepanovna and I stood on a doorstep at the cornerof the Zabalkansky Prospect, where we could see well, and whence, if need be, we could also make good our escape.
The market place was transformed in the twinkling of an eye. A moment before it had been bristling with life and the crowded street-cars had stopped to let their passengers scramble laboriously out. But now the whole square was suddenly as still as death, and, but for a few onlookers who watched the scene from a distance, the roadway was deserted.
From fifty to sixty soldiers filed slowly into the shed and a few others, with rifles ready, hurried now and again round the outside of the building. A fiendish din arose with the entry of the soldiers. The shrieking, howling, booing, cursing, and moaning sounded as if hell itself had been let loose! It was an uncanny contrast—the silent square, and the ghastly noise within the shed!
Stepanovna muttered something, but the only word I caught was “devils.” Sacks and bundles were being dragged out by the guards and hoisted on to trucks and lorries. At one door people were let out one by one after examination of their clothes and papers. The women were set at liberty, but the men, except the old and quite young boys, were marched off to the nearest Commissariat.
“What does it all mean?” I exclaimed, as we moved off along the Zabalkansky Prospect.
“Mean, Ivan Pavlovitch? Don’t you see? ‘Let’s grab!’ ‘Down with free-trading!’ ‘Away with speculators!’ That is what they say. ‘Speculation’ they call it. I am a ‘speculator,’ too,” she chuckled. “Do you think I ever got any work from the labour bureau, where I have been registered these three months? Or Varia, either, though we both wantjobs. The money Ivan Sergeievitch left us is running out, but we must live somehow, mustn’t we?”
Stepanovna lowered her voice.
“So we have sold a sideboard.... Yes,” she chuckled, “we sold it to some people downstairs. ‘Speculators,’ too, I expect. They came up early in the morning and took it away quietly, and our house committee never heard anything about it!”
Stepanovna laughed outright. She thought it a huge joke.
For all your furniture, you see, was supposed to be registered and belonged not to yourself but to the community. Superfluous furniture was to be confiscated in favour of the working-man, but generally went to decorate the rooms of members of the committee or groups of Communists in whose charge the houses were placed. Sailor Communists seemed to make the largest demands. “Good-morning,” they would say on entering your home. “Allow us, please, to look around and see how much furniture you have.” Some things, they would tell you, were required by the house committee. Or a new “worker” had taken rooms downstairs. He was a “party man,” that is, he belonged to the Communist Party and was therefore entitled to preference, and he required a bed, a couch, and some easy-chairs.
It was useless to argue, as some people did and got themselves into trouble by telling the “comrades” what they thought of them. The wise and thoughtful submitted, remembering that while many of these men were out just to pocket as much as they could, there were others who really believed they were thus distributing property in the interests of equality and fraternity.
But the wily and clever would exclaim: “My dearcomrades, I am delighted! Your comrade is a ‘party man’? That is most interesting, for I am intending to sign on myself. Only yesterday I put some furniture by for you. As for this couch you ask for, it is really indispensable, but in another room there is a settee you can have. And that picture, of course, I would willingly give you, only I assure you it is an heirloom. Besides, it is a very bad painting, an artist told me so last week. Would you not rather have this one, which he said was really good?”
And you showed them any rotten old thing, preferably somethingbig. Then you would offer them tea and apologize for giving them nothing but crusts with it. You explained you wished to be an “idealist” Communist, and your scruples would not permit you to purchase delicacies from “speculators.”
Your visitors were not likely to linger long over your crusts, but if you succeeded in impressing them with your devotion to the Soviet régime they would be less inclined to molest a promising candidate for comradeship.
But Stepanovna possessed no such subtlety. She was, on the contrary, unreasonably outspoken and I wondered that she did not get into difficulties.
Stepanovna and Varia often used to go to the opera, and when they came home they would discuss intelligently and with enthusiasm the merits and demerits of respective singers.
“I did not like the man who sang Lensky to-night,” one of them would say. “He baa-ed like a sheep and his acting was poor.”
Or, “So-and-so’s voice is really almost as good as Chaliapin’s, except in the lowest notes, but of course Chaliapin’s acting is much more powerful.”
“Stepanovna,” I once said, “used you to go to the opera before the revolution?”
“Why, yes,” she replied, “we used to go to theNarodny Dom.” TheNarodny Domwas a big theatre built for the people by the Tsar.
“But to the state theatres, the Marinsky opera or ballet?”
“No, that was difficult.”
“Well, then, why do you abuse the Bolsheviks who make it easy for you to go to what used to be the Imperial theatres and see the very best plays and actors?”
Stepanovna was stooping over the samovar. She raised herself and looked at me, considering my question.
“H’m, yes,” she admitted, “I enjoy it, it is true. But who is the theatre full of? Only school-children and our ‘comrades’ Communists. The school-children ought to be doing home-lessons and our ‘comrades’ ought to be hanging on the gallows. Varia and I can enjoy the theatre because we just have enough money to buy food in the markets. But go and ask those who stand in queues all day and all night for half a pound of bread or a dozen logs of firewood! How much do they enjoy the cheap theatres? I wonder, ah!”
So I said no more. Stepanovna had very decided notions of things. If she had been an Englishwoman before the war she would have been a militant suffragette.
It was at the beginning of February that I saw Stepanovna for the last time. My acquaintance with her ceased abruptly, as with other people under similar circumstances. Varia, it transpired, got into trouble through trying to communicate with Ivan Sergeievitch in Finland.
Before going to Stepanovna’s flat I always ‘phonedand asked, “Is your father any better?”—which meant, May I come and stay the night? To which she or Varia would reply, “Quite well, thank you, and he would like you to go and see him when you have time.”
On the last occasion when I called up, Stepanovna did not at once answer. Then in a voice full of indecision she stammered, “I don’t know—I think—I will ask—please wait a moment.” I waited and could hear she had not left the telephone. At last she continued tremblingly, “No, he is no better, he is very bad indeed—dying.” There was a pause. “I am going to see him,” she went on, stammering all the time, “at eleven o’clock to-morrow morning, do—do you understand?”
“Yes,” I said; “I will go too and wait for you.”
Wondering if we had understood each other, I stationed myself at the corner of the street a little before eleven, and watched from a distance the entrance to Stepanovna’s house. One glance, when she came out, satisfied her I was there. Walking off in the other direction, she followed Kazanskaya Street, only once looking round to make sure I was behind, and, reaching the Kazan Cathedral, entered it. I found her in a dark corner to the right.
“Varia is arrested,” she said, in great distress. “You must come to our flat no more, Ivan Pavlovitch. A messenger came from Viborg the day before yesterday and asked Varia, if she could, to get out to Finland. They went together to the Finland Station and got on the train. There they met another man who was to help them get over the frontier. He was arrested on the train and the other two with him.”
“Is there any serious charge?” I asked. “Simply running away is no grave offence.”
“They say the two men will be shot,” she replied. “But Varia only had some things she was taking to Ivan Sergeievitch’s wife.”
I tried to reassure her, saying I would endeavour to discover how Varia’s case stood, and would find some means of communication.
“I am expecting a search,” she went on, “but of course I have made preparations. Maybe we shall meet again some day, Ivan Pavlovitch. I hope so.”
I felt very sorry for poor Stepanovna in her trouble. She was a fine type of woman in her way, though her views on things were often crude. But it must be remembered that she was only a peasant. As I was crossing the threshold of the cathedral, something moved me to turn back for a moment, and I saw Stepanovna shuffle up to the altar and fall on her knees. Then I came away.
I was resolved to get the Policeman on the job at once to find out the circumstances of Varia’s case, which I felt sure could not be serious. But I was not destined to make this investigation. I never saw either Varia or Stepanovna again, nor was it possible for me to discover what ultimately became of them. Tossed hither and thither by the caprice of circumstance, I found myself shortly afterwards suddenly placed in a novel and unexpected situation, of which and its results, if the reader have patience to read a little further, he will learn.
Stáraya Derévnya, which means “the Old Village,” is a remote suburb of Petrograd, situated at the mouth of the most northerly branch of the River Neva, overlooking the Gulf of Finland. It is a poor and shabby locality, consisting of second-rate summer villas and a few small timber-yards and logmen’s huts. In winter when the gulf is frozen it is the bleakest of bleak places, swept by winds carrying the snow in the blizzard-like clouds across the dreary desert of ice. You cannot tell then where land ends and seas begins, for the flats, the shores, the marshes, and the sea lie hidden under a common blanket of soft and sand-like snowdrifts. In olden times I loved to don my skis and glide gently from the world into that vast expanse of frozen water, and there, miles out, lie down and listen to the silence.
A few days after I had parted from Stepanovna in the Kazan Cathedral, I sat in one of the smallest and remotest huts of Stáraya Derévnya. It was eleven o’clock of a dark and windless night. Except for the champing of a horse outside, the silence was broken only by the grunting and snoring of a Finnish contrabandist lying at full length on the dirty couch. Once, when the horse neighed, the Finn rose hurriedly with a curse. Lifting the latch cautiously, he stole out and led the animal round to the seaward side of the cottage, where it would be less audible from the road. Having recently smuggled a sleigh-load ofbutter into the city, he was now returning to Finland—with me.
It was after midnight when we drove out, and, conditions being good, the drive over the sea to a point well along the Finnish coast, a distance of some forty-odd miles, was to take us between four and five hours. The sledge was of the type known asdrovny, a wooden one, broad and low, filled with hay. Thedrovny, used mostly for farm haulage, is my favourite kind of sledge, and nestling comfortably at full length under the hay I thought of long night-drives in the interior in days gone by, when someone used to ride ahead on horseback with a torch to keep away the wolves.
In a moment we were out, flying at breakneck speed across the ice, windswept after recent storms. The half-inch of frozen snow just gave grip to the horse’s hoofs. Twice, suddenly bumping into snow ridges, we capsized completely. When we got going again the runners sang just like a saw-mill. The driver noticed this too, and was alive to the danger of being heard from shore a couple of miles away; but his sturdy pony, exhilarated by the keen frosty air, was hard to restrain.
Some miles out of Petrograd there lies on an island in the Finnish Gulf the famous fortress of Cronstadt, one of the most impregnable in the world. Search-lights from the fortress played from time to time across the belt of ice, separating the fortress from the northern shore. The passage through this narrow belt was the crucial point in our journey. Once past Cronstadt we should be in Finnish waters and safe.
To avoid danger from the searchlights, the Finn drove within a mile of the mainland, the runners hissing and singing like saws. As we entered the narrows a dazzling beam of light swept the horizonfrom the fortress, catching us momentarily in its track; but we were sufficiently near the shore not to appear as a black speck adrift on the ice.
Toonear, perhaps? The dark line of the woods seemed but a stone’s throw away! You could almost see the individual trees. Hell! what a noise our sledge-runners made!
“Can’t you keep the horse back a bit, man?”
“Yes, but this is the spot we’vegotto drive past quickly!”
We were crossing the line of Lissy Nos, a jutting point on the coast marking the narrowest part of the strait. Again a beam of light shot out from the fortress, and the wooden pier and huts of Lissy Nos were lit as by a flash of lightning. But we had passed the point already. It was rapidly receding into the darkness as we regained the open sea.
Sitting upright on the heap of hay, I kept my eyes riveted on the receding promontory. We were nearly a mile away now, and you could no longer distinguish objects clearly. But my eyes were still riveted on the rocky promontory.
Were those rocks—moving? I tried to pierce the darkness, my eyes rooted to the black point!
Rocks? Trees? Or—or——
I sprang to my feet and shook the Finn by the shoulders with all my force.
“Damn it, man! Drive like hell—we’re being pursued!”
Riding out from Lissy Nos was a group of horse-men, five or six in number. My driver gave a moan, lashed his horse, the sleigh leapt forward, and the chase began in earnest.
“Ten thousand marks if we escape!” I yelled in the Finn’s ear.
For a time we kept a good lead, but in the darkness it was impossible to see whether we were gaining or losing. My driver was making low moaning cries, he appeared to be pulling hard on the reins, and the sleigh jerked so that I could scarcely stand.
Then I saw that the pursuers were gaining—and gaining rapidly! The moving dots grew into figures galloping at full speed. Suddenly there was a flash and a crack, then another, and another. They were firing with carbines, against which a pistol was useless. I threatened the driver with my revolver if he did not pull ahead, but dropped like a stone into the hay as a bullet whizzed close to my ear.
At that moment the sledge suddenly swung round. The driver had clearly had difficulty with his reins, which appeared to have got caught in the shaft, and before I realized what was happening the horse fell, the sledge whirled round and came to a sudden stop.
At such moments one has to think rapidly. What would the pursuing Red guards go for first, a fugitive? Not if there was possible loot. And what more likely than that the sledge contained loot?
Eel-like, I slithered over the side and made in the direction of the shore. Progress was difficult, for there were big patches of ice, coal-black in colour, which were completely windswept and as slippery as glass. Stumbling along, I drew from my pocket a packet, wrapped in dark brown paper, containing maps and documents which were sufficient, if discovered, to assure my being shot without further ado, and held it ready to hurl away across the ice.
If seized, I would plead smuggling. It seemed impossible that I should escape! Looking backward I saw the group round the sledge. The Reds, dismounted, were examining the driver; in a momentthey would renew the pursuit, and I should be spotted at once, running over the ice.
Then an idea occurred.
The ice, where completely windswept, formed great patches as black as ink. My clothes were dark. I ran into the middle of a big black patch and looked at my boots. I could not see them!
To get to the shore was impossible, anyway, so this was the only chance. Jerking the packet a few yards from me where I might easily find it, I dropped flat on the black ice and lay motionless, praying that I should be invisible.
It was not long before I heard the sound of hoofs and voices approaching. The search for me had begun. But the riders avoided the slippery windswept places as studiously as I had done in running, and, thank heaven! just there much of the ice was windswept. As they rode round and about, I felt that someone was bound to ride just over me! Yet they didn’t, after all.
It seemed hours and days of night and darkness before the riders retreated to the sledge and rode off with it, returning whence they had come. But time is measured not by degrees of hope or despair, but by fleeting seconds and minutes, and by my luminous watch I detected that it was only half-past one. Prosaic half-past one!
Was the sombre expanse of frozen sea really deserted? Cronstadt loomed dimly on the horizon, the dark line of woods lay behind me, and all was still as death—except for the sea below, groaning and gurgling as if the great ice-burden were too heavy to bear.
Slowly and imperceptibly I rose, first on all fours, then kneeling, and finally standing upright. Theriders and the sledge were gone, and I was alone. Only the stars twinkled, as much as to say: “It’s all over! ’Twas a narrow squeak, wasn’t it? but a miss is as good as a mile!”
It must have been a weird, bedraggled figure that stumbled, seven or eight hours later, up the steep bank of the Finnish shore. That long walk across the ice was one of the hardest I ever had to make, slipping and falling at almost every step until I got used to the surface. On reaching light, snow-covered regions, however, I walked rapidly and made good progress. Once while I was resting I heard footsteps approaching straight in my direction. Crawling into the middle of another black patch, I repeated the manœuvre of an hour or two earlier, and lay still. A man, walking hurriedly toward Cronstadt from the direction of Finland, passed within half-a-dozen paces without seeing me.
Shortly after daylight, utterly exhausted, I clambered up the steep shore into the woods. Until I saw a Finnish sign-board I was still uncertain as to whether I had passed the frontier in the night or not. But, convincing myself that I had, though doubtful of my precise whereabouts, I sought a quiet spot behind a shed, threw myself on to the soft snow, and fell into a doze.
It was here that I was discovered by a couple of Finnish patrols, who promptly arrested me and marched me off to the nearest coastguard station. No amount of protestation availed to convince them I was not a Bolshevist spy. The assertion that I was an Englishman only seemed to intensify their suspicions, for my appearance completely belied the statement. Seizing all my money and papers, they locked me up in a cell, but removed me during theday to the office of the Commandant at Terijoki, some miles distant.
The Commandant, whom I had seen on the occasion of my last visit to Finland, would, I expected, release me at once. But I found a condition of things totally different from that obtaining six weeks earlier. A new commandant had been appointed, who was unpersuaded even by a telephone conversation conducted in his presence with the British representatives at the Finnish capital. The most he would do was to give me a temporary pass saying I was a Russian travelling to Helsingfors: with the result that I was re-arrested on the train and again held in detention at the head police office in the capital until energetic representations by the British Chargé d’Affaires secured my release, with profuse apologies from the Finnish authorities for the not unnatural misunderstanding.
The reader will, I hope, have become sufficiently interested in my story to inquire what were the circumstances which led to my taking this sudden journey to Finland. They were various. Were I writing a tale of fiction, and could allow free rein to whatsoever imagination I possess, I might be tempted at this point to draw my story to a startling climax by revealing Zorinsky in the light of a grossly misunderstood and unappreciated friend and saviour, while Stepanovna, the Journalist, or the Doctor would unexpectedly turn out to be treacherous wolves in sheep’s clothing, plotting diabolically to ensnare me in the toils of the Extraordinary Commission. As it is, however, fettered by the necessity of recording dull and often obvious events as they occurred, it will be no surprise to the reader to learn that the wolf, in a pretty bad imitation of sheep’s clothing(good enough, however, to deceive me), turned out actually to be Zorinsky.
It was the day after I had parted from Stepanovna that the Doctor told me that Melnikoff’s friend Shura, through sources at his disposal, had been investigating the personality of this interesting character, and had established it as an indisputable fact that Zorinsky was in close touch with people known to be in the employ ofNo. 2 Goróhovaya. This information, though unconfirmed and in itself proving nothing (was not the Policeman also in close touch with people in the employ ofNo. 2 Goróhovaya?), yet following on the news of Melnikoff’s death and Zorinsky’s general duplicity, resolved me to seek the first opportunity to revisit Finland and consult Ivan Sergeievitch.
There were other motives, also. I had communicated across the frontier by means of couriers, one of whom was found me by the Doctor, and another by one of the persons who play no part in my story, but whom I met at the Journalist’s. One of these couriers was an N.C.O. of the old army, a student of law, and a personal friend of the Doctor: the other a Russian officer whose known counter-revolutionary proclivities precluded the possibility of his obtaining any post in Soviet Russia at this time. Both crossed the frontier secretly and without mishap, but only one returned, bearing a cipher message which was all but indecipherable. Sending him off again, but getting no reply, I was in ignorance as to whether he had arrived or not, and, left without news, it was becoming imperative that I repeat my visit to the Finnish capital.
Furthermore, with passage of time I felt my position, in spite of friends, becoming not more secure, but rapidly less so. What might suddenly arise outof my connections with Zorinsky, for instance, no one could foresee, and I determined that the best thing would be to disappear completely for a short period and, returning, to start all over afresh.
I learned of the ice-route to Finland from my courier, who came back that way, and who returned to Finland the following night on the same sledge. Discreet inquiries at the logman’s hut produced the information that the courier’s smuggler, granted that he had safely reached Finland, was not due back for some time, but another one had arrived and would take any one who was willing to pay. The sum demanded, two thousand marks, when converted into foreign exchange, was about twenty pounds. But the Finn thinks of a mark as a shilling.
As ill-luck would have it, I found on arrival in Finland that Ivan Sergeievitch was in the Baltic States and no one knew when he would return. But I saw his wife, who had sent the indiscreet message to Petrograd leading to Varia’s arrest. She was mortified when I broke this news to her, but was unable to throw any light on Zorinsky. I also met several other Russian officers, none, however, who had known Melnikoff, and I thus got no further information.
The Doctor, of course, had denounced Zorinsky as aprovocateur, but there was as yet little evidence for that charge. Zorinsky might be an extortionist without being aprovocateur. Wild charges are brought against anybody and everybody connected withSovdepiaon the slightest suspicion, and I myself have been charged, on the one hand, by the Bolsheviks with being a rabid monarchist, and, on the other, by reactionaries with being a “subtle” Bolshevik. However, my aversion to Zorinsky had become so intense that I resolved that under no pretext orcondition would I have anything more to do with him.