Chapter XXIII: Freeman Explains

The next I knew I was in bed, in a cool, darkened room, with a man seated in an easy-chair near at hand, smoking a cigarette, and reading what looked remarkably like an English newspaper.

I lay and looked at him lazily, for a few minutes. I hadn't the least idea as to where I was, or how I came there; I didn't feel any curiosity on the point. The blissful consciousness of cleanliness and comfort was quite sufficient for me at present. My broken arm had been set and put in rude splints while I was in the prison, by one of my fellow sufferers, I expect, and was now scientifically cased in plaster of Paris; the bullet wounds in my right arm and side were properly dressed and strapped, and felt pretty comfortable till I tried to shift my position a little, when I realized they were there.

At the slight movement the man in the chair laid down his paper and came up to the bed.

"Hello, Mr. Wynn; feel a bit more like yourself, eh?" he asked bluffly, in English.

"Why, yes, I feel just about 'O. K.,' thanks," I responded, and laughed inanely. My voice sounded funny--thin and squeaky--and it jumped from one note to another. I hadn't the least control over it. "Say, where am I, and who are you? I guess you've done me a good turn!"

"Humph, I suppose we have. Good Lord, think of an Englishman--you're an American, but it's all the same in this case--being treated like that by these Russian swine! You're still in St. Petersburg; we've got to patch you up a bit before we can take you back to good old England."

Now why should he, or any one else, be "taking me back to England?" I puzzled over it in silence before I put the question.

"Never you mind about that now," he said with brusque kindliness. "All you've got to think about is getting strong again."

But already I began to remember, and past events came jumping before my mind like cinematograph pictures.

"You fetched me out of prison,--you and Inspector Freeman," I said slowly.

"Look here, don't you worry," he began.

"Yes, I must--I want to get things clear; wait a bit. He said something. I know; he came to arrest me for murder,--the murder of Cassavetti."

"Just so; and a jolly good thing for you he did! But, as you've remembered that much, I must warn you that I'm a detective in charge of you, and anything you say will be used against you."

More cinematograph pictures,--Cassavetti as I saw him, lying behind the door, his eyes open, staring; myself on the steps below Westminster Bridge, calling to Anne, as she sat in the boat. Anne! No more pictures, but a jiggery of red and black splashes, and then a darkness, through which I passed somehow into a pleasant place,--a garden where roses bloomed and a fountain plashed, and Anne was beside me; I held her hand in mine.

Now she was gone, she had vanished mysteriously. What was that man saying? "The Fraulein has not been here at all!" Why, she was here a moment ago; what a fool that waiter was! A waiter? No, he was a droshky driver; I knew it, though I could not see him. There were other voices speaking now,--men's voices,--subdued but distinct; and as I listened I came back from the land of dreams--or delirium--to that of reality.

"Yes, he's been pretty bad, sir. He came to himself quite nicely, and began to talk. No, I didn't tell him anything, as you said I wasn't to, but he remembered by himself, and then I had to warn him, and he went right off again."

"You're an ass, Harris," said another voice. "What did you want to speak to him at all for?"

I opened my eyes at that, and saw Freeman and the other man looking down at me.

"He isn't an ass; he's a real good sort," I announced. "And I didn't murder Cassavetti, though I'd have murdered half a dozen Cassavettis to get out of that hell upon earth yonder!"

I shut my eyes again, settled myself luxuriously against my pillows, and went,--back to Anne and the rose-garden.

I suppose I began to pull round from that time, and in a few days I was able to get up. I almost forgot that I was still in custody, and even when I remembered the fact, it didn't trouble me in the least. After what I had endured in the Russian prison, it was impossible, at present, anyhow, to consider Detective-Inspector Freeman and his subordinate, Harris, as anything less than the best of good fellows and good nurses. True, they never left me to myself for an instant; one or other of them was always in close attendance on me; but there was nothing of espionage in that attendance. They merely safe-guarded me, and, at the same time, helped me back to life, as if I had been their comrade rather than their prisoner. Freeman, in due course, gave me his formal warning that "anything I said with respect to the crime with which I was charged would be used against me;" but in all other respects both he and Harris acted punctiliously on the principle held by only two civilized nations in the world,--England and the United States of America,--that "a man is regarded as innocent in the eyes of the law until he has been tried and found guilty."

"Well, how goes it to-day?" Freeman asked, as he relieved his lieutenant one morning. "You look a sight better than you did. D'you think you can stand the journey? We don't want you to die on our hands _en route_, you know!"

"We'll start to-day if you like; I'm fit enough," I answered. "Let's get back and get it over. It's a preposterous charge, you know; but--"

"We needn't discuss that, Mr. Wynn," he interrupted hastily.

"All right; we won't. Though I fancy I shouldn't have been alive at this time if you hadn't taken it into your heads to hunt me down as the murderer of a man who wasn't even a naturalized Englishman. You came just in the nick of time, Mr. Freeman."

"Well, yes, I think we did that," he conceded. "You were the most deplorable object I've ever seen in the course of my experience,--and that's fairly long and varied. I'd like to know how you got into their clutches; though you needn't say if it has any connection with--"

"Why, certainly. It's nothing to do with Cassavetti, or Selinski, or whatever his name was," I said.

"I got wind of a Nihilist meeting in the woods, went there out of curiosity; and the soldiers turned up. There was a free fight; they got the best of it, took me prisoner with the others, and that's all. But how did you trace me? How long had you been in Petersburg?"

"Only a couple of days. Found you had disappeared and the Embassies were raising Cain. It seemed likely you'd been murdered, as Carson was. The police declared they were making every effort to trace you, without success; and I doubt if they would have produced you, even in response to the extradition warrant, but that some one mysteriously telephoned information to the American Embassy that you were in prison--in the fortress--and even gave your number; though he would not give his own name or say where he was speaking from."

Who was it, I wondered,--Loris or Mirakoff? It must have been one or the other. He had saved my life, anyhow.

"So acting on that, we simply went and demanded you; and good heavens, what a sight you were! I thought you'd die in the droshky that we brought you here in. I couldn't help telling the officer who handed you over that I couldn't congratulate him on his prison system; and he grinned and said:

"'Ah, I have heard that you English treat your prisoners as honored guests. We prefer our own methods.'"