Chapter XV: An Unpleasant Experience

With the handkerchief in my hand, I started running wildly after the fast disappearing droshky, only to fall plump into the arms of a surly gendarme, a Muscovite giant, who collared me with one hand, while he drew his revolver with the other, and brandished it as if he was minded to bash my face in with the butt end, a playful little habit much in vogue with the Russian police.

"Let me go. I'm all right; I'm an American," I cried indignantly. "I must follow that droshky!"

It was out of sight by this time, and he grunted contemptuously. But he put up his weapon, and contented himself with hauling me off to the nearest bureau, where, in spite of my protestations, I was searched from head to foot roughly enough, and all the contents of my pockets annexed, as well as the handkerchief. Then I was unceremoniously thrust into a filthy cell, and left there, in a state of rage and humiliation that can be better imagined than described. I seemed to have been there for half a lifetime, though I found afterwards it was only about two hours, when I was fetched out, and brought before the chief of the bureau,--a pompous and truculent individual, with shifty bead-like eyes.

My belongings lay on the desk before him,--with the exception of my loose cash, which I never saw again.

He began to question me arrogantly, but modified his tone when I asserted that I was an American citizen, resident in Petersburg as representative of an English newspaper; and reminded him that, if he dared to detain me, he would have to reckon with both the American and English authorities.

"That is all very well; but you have yet to explain how you came to be breaking the law," he retorted.

"What law have I broken?" I demanded.

"You were running away."

"I was not. I was running after a droshky."

"Why?"

"Because there was a woman in it--a lady--an Englishwoman or American, who called out to me to help her."

"Who was the woman?"

"How should I know?" I asked blandly. I remembered what Von Eckhardt had told me,--that the police had been on Anne's track for these three years past. If the peril in which she was now placed was from the revolutionists, as it must be, I could not help her by betraying her to the police.

"You say she was English or American? Why do you say so?"

"Because she called out in English: 'Help! Save me!' I heard the words distinctly, and started to run after the droshky. Wouldn't you have done the same in my place? I guess you're just the sort of man who'd be first to help beauty in distress!"

This was sarcasm and sheer insolence. I couldn't help it, he looked such a brutal little beast! But he took it as a compliment, and actually bowed and smirked, twirling his mustache and leering at me like a satyr.

"You have read me aright, Monsieur," he said quite amiably. "So this lady was beautiful?"

"Well, I can't say. I didn't really see her; the droshky drove off the very instant she called out. One of the horses had been down, and I was standing to look at it," I explained, responding diplomatically to his more friendly mood. I wanted to get clear as soon as possible, for I knew that every moment was precious. "I just saw a hat and some dark hair--"

"Dark, eh? Should you know her again?"

"I guess not. I tell you I didn't really see her face."

"How could she know you were an American?"

I shrugged my shoulders.

"Perhaps she can't speak any language but English."

"What is this?" He held up the handkerchief, and sniffed at it. It was faintly perfumed. How well I knew that perfume, sweet and elusive as the scent of flowers on a rainy day.

"A handkerchief. It fell at my feet, and I picked it up before I started to run."

"It is marked 'A. P.' Do you know any one with those initials?"

Those beady eyes of his were fixed on my face, watching my every expression, and I knew that his questions were dictated by some definite purpose.

"Give me time," I said, affecting to rack my brains in an effort of recollection. "I don't think,--why, yes--there was Abigail Parkinson, Job Parkinson's wife,--a most respectable old lady I knew in the States,--the United States of America, you know."

His eyes glinted ominously, and he brought his fat, bejewelled hand down on the table with a bang.

"You are trifling with me!"

"I'm not!" I assured him, with an excellent assumption of injured innocence. "You asked me if I knew any one with those initials, and I'm telling you."

"I am not asking you about old women on the other side of the world! Think again! Might not the initials stand for--Anna Petrovna, for instance?"

So he had guessed, after all, who she was!

"Anna what? Oh--Petrovna. Why, yes, of course they stand for that, but it's a Russian name, isn't it? And this lady was English, or American!"

He was silent for a minute, fingering the handkerchief, which I longed to snatch from the contamination of his touch.

"A mistake has been made, as I now perceive, Monsieur," he said smoothly, at last. "I think your release might be accomplished without much difficulty."

He paused and looked hard at my pocket-book.

"I guess if you'll hand me that note case it can be accomplished right now," I suggested cheerfully. I don't believe there's a Russian official living, high or low, who is above accepting a bribe, or extorting blackmail; and this one proved no exception to the rule.

I passed him a note worth about eight dollars, and he grasped and shook my hand effusively as he took it.

"Now we are friends, _hein_?" he exclaimed. "Accept my felicitations at the so happy conclusion of our interview. You understand well that duty must be done, at whatever personal cost and inconvenience. Permit me to restore the rest of your property, Monsieur; this only I must retain." He thrust the handkerchief into his desk. "Perhaps--who knows--we may discover the fair owner, and restore it to her."

His civility was even more loathsome to me than his insolence had been, and I wanted to kick him. But I didn't. I offered him a cigarette, instead, and we parted with mutual bows and smiles.

Once on the street again I walked away in the opposite direction to that I should have taken if I had been sure I would not be followed and watched; but I guessed that, for the present at least, I would be kept under strict surveillance, and doubtless at this moment my footsteps were being dogged.

Therefore I made first for the cafe where I usually lunched, and, a minute after I had seated myself, a man in uniform strolled in and placed himself at a table just opposite, with his back to me, but his face towards a mirror, in which, as I soon discovered, he was watching my every movement.

"All right, my friend. Forewarned is forearmed; I'll give you the slip directly," I thought, and went on with my meal, affecting to be absorbed in a German newspaper, which I asked the waiter to bring me.

In the ordinary course I should have met people I knew, for the cafe was frequented by most of the foreign journalists in Petersburg, but the hour was early for _dejeuner_, and the spy and I had the place to ourselves for the present.

I knew that I should communicate the fact that Anne was in Petersburg to the Grand Duke Loris as soon as possible; in the hope that he might know or guess who were her captors, and where they were taking her; but it was imperative that I should exercise the utmost caution.

After we reached Petersburg, and before he left me, Mishka had, as his master had promised, given me instructions as to how I was to send a private message to the Duke in case of necessity. He took me to a house in a mean street near the Ismailskaia Prospekt--not half a mile from the place where I was arrested this morning--of which the ground floor was a poor class cafe frequented chiefly by workmen and students.

"You will go to the place I shall show you," he had informed me beforehand, "and call for a glass of tea, just like any one else. Then as you pay for it, you drop a coin,--so. You will pick it up, or the waiter will,--it is all one, that; any one may drop a coin accidentally! Now, if you were just an ordinary customer, nothing more would happen; the waiter would keep near your table for a minute or two, and that is all. But if you are on business you will ask him, 'Is Nicolai Stefanovitch here to-day?' Or you may say any name you think of,--a common one is best. He will answer, 'At what hour should he be here?' and you say, 'I do not know when he returns--from his work.' Or 'from Wilna,' or elsewhere; that is unimportant, like the name. But the questions must be put so, and there must be the pause, between the two words 'returns from' just for one beat of the clock as it were, or while one blows one's nose, or lights a cigarette. Then he will know you are one of us, and will go away; and presently one will come and sit at the table, and say, 'I am so and so,--' the name you mentioned. He will drink his tea, and you will go out together; and if it is a note you will pass it to him, so that none shall see; or if it is a message, you will tell it him very quietly."

We rehearsed the shibboleth in my room. I did it right the first time, much to Mishka's satisfaction; and when we reached the cafe he let me be spokesman. Within three minutes a cadaverous looking workman in a red blouse lounged up to our table, ordered his glass of tea, nodded to me as if I was an old acquaintance, and muttered the formula.

He and I had gone out together, leaving Mishka in the cafe,--since in Russia three men walking and conversing together are bound to be eyed suspiciously,--and my new acquaintance remarked:

"There is no message, as I know; this is but a trial, and you have done well. If there should be a letter, a cigarette, with the tobacco hanging a little loose at each end,--" he rolled one as he spoke and made a slovenly job of it,--"is an excellent envelope, and one that we understand."

We had separated at the end of the street, and Mishka rejoined me later at my hotel. But I had not needed to try the shibboleth since, though I had dropped into the cafe more than once, and drank my glass of tea,--without dropping a coin. And now the moment had come when I must test the method of communication as speedily as possible.