The Red Symbol Part 17

"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 a.s.sured him, with an excellent a.s.sumption 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 s.n.a.t.c.h 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 pa.s.sed 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 cla.s.s 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 gla.s.s 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 pa.s.s it to him, so that none shall see; or if it is a message, you will tell it him very quietly."

We rehea.r.s.ed 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 gla.s.s 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 gla.s.s of tea,--without dropping a coin. And now the moment had come when I must test the method of communication as speedily as possible.

CHAPTER XVI

UNDER SURVEILLANCE

I paid my bill, strolled out, and in the doorway encountered a man I knew slightly--a young officer--with whom I paused to chat, thereby blocking the doorway temporarily, with the result that I found my friend the spy--as I was now convinced he was--at my elbow. My unexpected halt had pulled him up short.

"Pardon!" I said with the utmost politeness, stepping aside, so he had to pa.s.s out, though I guessed he was angry enough at losing my conversation, for I was telling Lieutenant Mirakoff of my arrest,--as a great joke, at which we both laughed uproariously.

"They should have seen that you were a foreigner, and therefore quite mad,--and harmless," he cried.

"Now, I ought to call you out for that!" I a.s.serted.

"At your service!" he answered, still laughing, as we separated.

The spy was apparently deeply interested in the contents of a shop window near at hand, and I went off briskly in the other direction; but in a minute or two later, when I paused, ostensibly to compare my watch with a clock which I had just pa.s.sed, I saw, as I glanced back, that he was on my track once more.

This was getting serious, and I adopted a simple expedient to give him the slip for the present. I hailed a droshky and bade the fellow drive to a certain street, not far from that where Mishka's cafe was situated.

We started off at the usual headlong speed, and presently, as we whirled round a corner, I called on the driver to stop, handed him a fare that must have represented a good week's earnings, and ordered him to drive on again as fast as he could, and for as long as his horse would hold out.

He grinned, "clucked" to his horse, and was off on the instant, while I turned into a little shop close by, whence I had the satisfaction, less than half a minute after, of seeing a second droshky dash past, in pursuit of the first, with the spy lolling in it. If my Jehu kept faith--there was no telling if he would do that or not, though I had to take the risk--_monsieur le mouchard_ would enjoy a nice drive, at the expense of his government!

In five minutes I was at the cafe, where I dropped my coin; it rolled to a corner and the waiter picked it up, while I sipped my tea and grumbled at the scarcity of lemon. I asked the prescribed question when he restored the piece; and almost immediately Mishka himself joined me.

This was better than I had dared to hope, for I knew I could speak to him freely; in fact I told him everything, including the ruse by which I had eluded my vigilant attendant.

"You must not try that again," he said, in his sulky fashion. "It has served once, yes; but it will not serve again. When he finds that you have cheated him he will make his report, and then you will have, not one, but several spies to reckon with; that is, if they think it worth while. Still you have done well,--very well. Now you must wait until you hear from my master." Mishka never mentioned a name if he could avoid doing so.

"But can't you give me some idea as to where she is likely to be?" I demanded. To wait, and continue to act my part, as if there was no such person as Anne Pendennis in the world and in deadly peril was just about the toughest duty imaginable.

"I can tell you nothing, and you, by yourself, can do nothing," he retorted stolidly. "If you are wise you will go about your business as if nothing had happened. But be in your rooms by--nine o'clock to-night.

It is unlikely that we can send you any word before then."

Nine o'clock! And it was now barely noon! Nine mortal hours; and within their s.p.a.ce what might not happen? But there was no help for it. Mishka had spoken the truth; by myself I could do nothing.

It was hard--hard to be bound like this, with invisible fetters; and to know all the time that the girl I loved was so near and yet so far, needing my aid, while I was powerless to help her,--I, who would so gladly lay down my life for her.

Who was she? What was she? How was her fate linked with that of this great grim land,--a land "agonizing in the throes of a new birth?" If she had but trusted me in the days when we had been together, could I have saved her then? Have spared her the agony my heart told me she was suffering now?

Yes,--yes, I said bitterly to myself. I could have saved her, if she had trusted me; for then she would have loved me; would have been content to share my life. A roving life it would have been, of course, for we were both nomads by choice as well as by chance, and the nomadic habit, once formed, is seldom broken. But how happy we should have been! Our wanderings would never have brought us to Russia, though. Heavens, how I hated--how I still hate it; the greatest and grandest country in the world, viewed under the aspect of sheer land; a territory to which even our own United States of America counts second for extent, for fertility, for natural wealth in wood and oil and minerals. A country that G.o.d made a paradise, or at least a vast storehouse for the supply of human necessities and luxuries; but a country of which man has made such a h.e.l.l, that, in comparison with it, Dante's "Inferno" reads like a story of childish imaginings.

Yes, Russia was a h.e.l.l upon earth; and Petersburg was the centre and epitome of it, I said in my soul, as I loitered on one of the bridges that afternoon, and looked on the swift flowing river, on the splendid buildings, gleaming white, as the gilded cupolas and spires of the churches gleamed fire red, under the brilliant sunshine. A fair city outwardly, a whited sepulchre raised over a charnel-house. A city of terror, wherein every man is an Ishmael, knowing--or suspecting--that every other man's hand is against him.