Part 13
“At least, I hope,” said his wife, “that the result of all this, and of your having to do all this extra work, will be that you will get promotion.”
“I doubt it,” said Alexander Petrovitch. “I have got no protection, and protection is everything. I have finished my dinner. I want some tea.”
His wife called Sasha, the maid, and told her to bring the samovar, and then scolded her violently because it was not ready. She then made a further scene about the way in which the lemon was cut. Finally the samovar was brought, Alexander Petrovitch was given his tea and began smoking cigarette after cigarette in gloomy silence. His wife sat at the head of the table and said nothing. The children played in the corner with some wooden soldiers, and every now and then a dull boom was heard outside, and once or twice the window shook and rattled.
“Guns!” said Alexander Petrovitch. “They are firing in the Tverskaia, I suppose.”
At that moment the bell rang.
“I think,” said Alexander Petrovitch’s wife, “that it must be Ivan Ivanovitch; he said he would come round this evening if he could.”
“I shall have to go presently,” said Alexander Petrovitch; “I’ve got to go back to the office.”
Then the door was opened, and seven or eight people walked into the room. They were young schoolboys and students between the ages of sixteen and eighteen, and there were two girls with them.
Alexander Petrovitch and his wife were surprised at this influx of guests, and the children stood up in the corner and stared.
“Whom have I the honour to address and what can I do for you?” said Alexander Petrovitch.
A young student with long black hair, a seedy overcoat, and a worn fur cap appeared to be the spokesman of the group, and, taking off his cap, said: “We are the representatives of the flying column of the Social Revolutionaries. We have come to carry out our orders.”
Alexander Petrovitch’s wife stood up and turned pale. The schoolboys and the students surrounded Alexander Petrovitch and, linking their arms in his, forced him out of the room. He turned round and looked at his wife and the children. “I thought as much!” he said. Then he was pushed out of the room and down the staircase.
All this happened in a moment. His wife stood still as though transfixed, and could not move or utter.
Two or three minutes passed in breathless silence, and Peter began to cry. They had left the door open. The banging of the street door was heard, and then two or three shots rang out.
Sasha, the maid, came rushing into the room, screaming with all her might--
“They have killed Alexander Petrovitch in the yard!”
THE AMORPHISTS
I was staying not long ago in a small town in the centre of Russia which I will call T----. It was a small, sleepy town, through which an indolent river wended its way. The houses were low, one-storeyed, built of wood and painted white, adorned with old-fashioned delicate stucco, delicate pilasters and wooden verandahs; and many of them had gardens and trellis-work arbours. The place breathed a spirit of the dying eighteenth century. One seemed to be in a kind of Russian “Cranford.” The shops and market-places, the hotel with its stiff early Victorian furniture--mahogany, stuffed with faded red rep--the squatting churches, the slow moving, leisurely inhabitants, all seemed to belong to a remoter time than ours. Here, I thought, in any case, the Revolution cannot have penetrated; to seek for politics here would be like looking for bombs in the Garden of Proserpine. But when I was waiting for my dinner in the dining-room of the hotel, when the great mechanical barrel-organ had played a tune by Donizetti out of _Lucrezia Borgia_ for the tenth time, I was disillusioned by the innkeeper, a fat, smiling man, with a huge beard, high boots, and a loose, white untucked shirt, with a red corded waistband round it.
“Here,” I said to him, “you have in any case the advantage of being free from revolutionary turmoil.”
“How so?” he asked, in a slightly injured tone, which was due to the fact, not that I had suspected his native city of being anti-revolutionary, but of being void of teeming events.
“We, too, have our disorders, very serious disorders,” he said, with pride. “The day before yesterday there were terrible occurrences.”
“Really,” I answered, with great interest, “what were they?”
“Is it possible that you have not heard,” he asked, “Why, everybody knows that the day before yesterday the Amorphists made an attempt.”
I confessed that I had not heard of it, because I had been very busy, and I pressed him to relate to me the proceedings of the Amorphists, adding that I was not quite sure who the Amorphists were.
“Everybody knows,” said my host, “that the Amorphists are the extreme left wing of the Free Law Party. They are to the left of all left parties, which run thus: Social Revolutionaries, Maximalists, Anarchists, Amorphists.”
“But what are the Free Law Party?” I asked.
“The Free Law Party,” he answered, “are those people who wish the law to be free.”
“How free?” I asked.
“Free Law,” he answered, “is like free trade. In some countries there is free trade. We wish for free law; everybody to be free to make whatever laws he likes, and everybody else to be free to obey them.”
“And to disobey them?” I asked.
“Yes, of course, and to disobey them. Well, I will tell you what happened. The Amorphists--that is to say the left wing of the Free Law Party--were getting discontented at the inactivity of the rest of their party”----
“What are Amorphists?” I interrupted.
“It is a secret,” he answered, “but I will tell you this; nobody can be an Amorphist who recognises any law or rule, and nobody can be an Amorphist who is more than seventeen years of age. They have no President, for every Amorphist is a President. Their watchword is, ‘Death to the Bourgeoisie; away with the intellectuals; down with the students; to hell with the Jews; Life, Liberty, Anarchy; Death.’ They wear a sign nobody can recognise unless he is initiated, and whoever betrays it is condemned to be drowned on dry land, like a Catholic Freemason.”
“What are those?” I asked.
“Freemasons,” he replied--he had now become used, and consequently indulgent to my ignorance--“are those people who drink each other’s healths in water. Well, as I was saying, the Amorphists who constituted the left wing of the Free Law Party were discontented with the apathy of the rest of their colleagues, and they decided that this state of things could not last any longer, and that they must make themselves felt; so they decided to kill Michael Ivanovitch.”
“Who,” I asked, “is Michael Ivanovitch?”
The innkeeper’s astonishment knew no bounds. My not having heard of the Amorphists, of free law, or freemasons, he quite understood, but Michael Ivanovitch! That was too much. Everybody knew Michael Ivanovitch. “He is the assistant of the Police Inspector,” he said, with an air of patient pity. “They settled to kill him. Lots were drawn, and Vasili, Paul, and Trafim were chosen to kill him--Vasili the floor-cleaner, Paul the stone-mason, and Trafim the stove-maker.” (He now gave explanations unasked, as one does to small children.) “So Vasili, Paul, and Trafim went off to buy a bomb at the Apothecary’s opposite--he is cunning in the making of bombs. They bought a bomb, and they then went to make the attempt. Vasili and Paul were chosen to act, Trafim was to keep guard. It was he who told the story afterwards. They went and sat on a seat in the big street here (it was quite deserted at this hour), along which they knew Michael Ivanovitch would pass at five minutes to six, since he passed that way every night on his way to dinner. But Heaven knows why! Michael Ivanovitch was late; it was cold, dark, and drizzly, a fine rain was falling, and on Paul, Vasili, and Trafim, as they waited, a great tediousness descended. At last Paul asked Vasili if he had ever been to the Circus. Vasili said he had never been to the Circus. Paul said Vasili knew nothing of anything, and that he for his part had been to the Circus often, and that it was a fine sight. There was a maiden, beautiful as the day, glittering with spangles, who stood on a horse, and leapt through a paper hoop, and alighted once more on the horse. Then there was a Chinaman, a real Chinaman with a big pigtail, who spun a pail of water on his finger. There was also a clown who threw a great golden ball into the air and caught it on his nose as easily as a trout catches a fly. ‘Yes,’ said Vasili, ‘I know how that is done; I can do it myself. You throw the ball up like this,’ and he made a gesture. ‘Fool!’ said Paul, ‘thou knowest nothing at all. May the soul of thy mother be vexed! He does it like this,’ and suiting the action to the word he lightly threw the bomb which he was holding in his left hand into the air. The bomb exploded, Paul was blown to bits, and Vasili was left a mangled heap.
“Trafim, who was only wounded, was very angry, and after taking from the mangled corpse of Vasili a Browning pistol, saying, ‘It is no use wasting twenty-four roubles,’ he went straight to the Apothecary who had sold him the bomb. ‘Scoundrel,’ he said, ‘what sort of goods do you sell? And you even dared to boast. Melinite! Melinite! Here is Melinite for you! It goes off before it is meant to. You do not know how to make a simple bomb. Cheat! Rascal!’
“‘Who says I don’t know how to make bombs?’ said the Apothecary, wounded in his professional pride.
“‘I say so,’ said Trafim. ‘The bomb you sold us yesterday went off of its own accord. It was worth nothing at all. May the soul of thy mother be annoyed, you yellow-eyed Arcadia!’”
“What is an Arcadia?” I asked.
“An Arcadia is the same as a Cholera,” he answered.
“‘You say I am a yellow-eyed Arcadia,’ he continued, ‘and you are a yellow-eyed Arcadia yourself. You say I cannot make bombs! Look at this!’ and he produced a bomb from a drawer, and banged it down on the counter. The bomb went off, the shop was wrecked, the assistant of the Apothecary was killed; Trafim was blown through the window and wounded; but the Apothecary, who came off with a scratch, smiled triumphantly amidst the wreckage, and said, ‘Who says I do not know how to make bombs? Yellow-eyed Arcadia, indeed!’
“Now a large crowd had gathered outside, attracted by the noise; a policeman came, and every one said something must be done. ‘Send for the Chief of the Police,’ they cried. But the policeman began to cry and said he was a family man; and at last Peter Alexandrovitch, merchant, went and fetched the Chief of Police. The Chief of Police said he could not act without orders, and went to the Prefect. The Prefect telephoned for orders to the Governor, who telephoned back that the Apothecary’s house must be searched, and any bombs and weapons found there must be taken instantly to the Police Station. The Chief of Police came back with the news, and told the policeman to search the Apothecary’s house, for only the shop had been damaged. But the policeman said, ‘For the sake of Heaven, have mercy on a family man.’ The Chief of Police appealed to the crowd for a patriotic volunteer, but the crowd began at once to melt away.
“‘It is not our business,’ at last he said, ‘it is the Electrotechnician’s business; send for the Electrotechnician.’ No sooner said than done. People rushed to fetch the Electrotechnician. He soon arrived, and was told what to do. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘These bombs are Melinite; give me five hundred roubles, and I will bring them out.’ The police said, ‘We have no such sum.’ Nevertheless, in an hour’s time the money was found, and by evening a basketful of bombs was carefully carried by the terrified policemen to the Police Station. Here the bombs were left, and yesterday the Governor drove to the Police Station with an engineer, who examined the bombs; he found that all the explosive had been taken out, and that they were filled with cotton wool.”
“Who did that?” I asked.
“Why, the Electrotechnician, of course,” said the innkeeper. “Do you not know he is the Honorary Vice-President of Amorphists?”
“And was he arrested?” I asked.
“Heaven be with him, no,” said the innkeeper. “He was thanked by the Governor in person.”
SHERLOCK HOLMES IN RUSSIA
THE STORY OF A SKAT SCORING BOOK
(With apologies to Sir A. Conan Doyle)
It was in November 1907 that I went to Moscow to meet Sherlock Holmes, who was returning via Kiachta by the Trans-Siberian Railway from Afghanistan, where rumour said he was connected with certain not altogether official negotiations between the British Government and the Ameer of Afghanistan. During his return journey, Holmes, indefatigable as usual, had enabled the Russian police to lay hands at Irkutsk on the ringleaders of a daring revolutionary band who were plotting to kidnap the Emperor of Russia. So much I had gathered from a laconic post card dated Ufa, in which he also requested me to meet him at Moscow on the 20th of November. When, however, I arrived at Moscow, I found the following telegram awaiting me:--
“Take night train town O----; government Z----; meet you station; prospect excellent sport; bring furs.”
To any one acquainted with Sherlock Holmes’ methods and habits this seemed to signify that his ever-restless brain was once more on the scent of some thrilling mystery or some baffling crime. After spending the day at Moscow, I took the night train, as directed, and I arrived the next morning at O----. I found my friend awaiting me at the station, muffled in a thick shouba, and smoking a pipe of more than usually strong tobacco.
“I hope you have brought a warm coat, Watson,” was his greeting; “we have got a thirty-mile drive before us;” and giving orders to a porter to carry my bag, in Russian, which he spoke fluently, he led the way through the station to where a sledge drawn by three horses, harnessed abreast, awaited us.
“Jump in,” he said, “we have no time to lose. We are driving,” he continued, as we made ourselves comfortable in the straw and wrapped ourselves up with a thick fur rug, “to the property of Prince B----, whose acquaintance I made in Transbaikalia, and who invited me to stay with him for a few days’ wolf shooting. The Prince is expecting you.” During the first half-hour of the drive Holmes discoursed learnedly on old violins and Elzevir editions, interrupting his discourse to point out from time to time the effects of light on the snowy plain, or to make some pregnant comment on the manners and customs of the villagers whom we passed. Then, when we had driven for about half an hour, he said, “You will now oblige me, Watson, by not talking to me until we arrive at our destination. I am engaged in following a train of speculation which requires all my attention.”
Knowing my friend’s habits I showed neither surprise nor annoyance, and it was not long before I fell into a deep sleep.
When I awoke we had reached the property of Prince B----. Prince B----’s home was situated at a stone’s-throw from a long straggling village composed of log-built huts, and now mantled in a thick covering of snow.
The houses, for there were two, were situated in the midst of a garden plentifully wooded with pine trees and Siberian firs. The houses were separate, although close to each other; both of them were two-storeyed, the first, at which the horses pulled up, being built of wood painted red, the second, and farther one, of white bricks.
“You have already been here two or three days?” I ventured to ask, as we drove through the garden gate.
“Watson, you are incorrigible,” replied Holmes. “Had you observed the name of the station whence my message was despatched you would have known that I myself arrived this morning from the town of A----, which a glance at the map would have shown you is a twelve hours’ journey from O----. This is the first time I have the pleasure of enjoying the Prince’s hospitality, and when the Prince invited me he begged me, if possible, to persuade you to accompany me. I am glad you have come, for who knows but that I may need your assistance before long.”
I could not help thinking that the reproach was in this case scarcely justified, since, being entirely ignorant of the Russian language, I could not be expected to decipher the name of a telegraph station, but I merely replied: “You have at present no immediate problem on hand?”
“Watson,” said Holmes, as we reached the front door, “every fresh human being we meet is a possible problem.”
We were met and warmly welcomed by the Prince, and after we had been shown to our rooms, which were in the further stone house, we were conducted to the drawing-room in the wooden house, where the Prince and his family awaited us. The Prince was a middle-aged man with silver-grey hair and mild grey eyes; he wore a grey undress military tunic, and Holmes remarked, as we washed our hands upstairs, that he supposed I had already noticed the Prince was a general adjutant of the Emperor’s suite; that he had served in Turkestan before he had been in the Far East; that he was at present suffering from a slight toothache; and that he had been on two big game expeditions in Africa. I confessed that all this had escaped me, and Holmes said that he hadn’t time to detail to me the links of the chain, but if I would glance at the Prince’s uniform, the spots on his forehead, the iodoform stain on his upper lip, and the antelope horns in the front hall, with their respective dates, perhaps all would be clear to me. The Prince’s family consisted of his wife, his eldest son, and his daughter. The Princess was a dark, thin, young-looking woman, with large grey eyes, and the son, Prince Alexander, a tall, dark young man of about twenty-three, dressed in an ordinary tweed shooting suit; the daughter, Princess Barbara, was a girl of nineteen, very fair, with blue eyes. The whole family talked English with the greatest fluency.
As soon as the Prince had presented us to his family, he led us into the dining-room, where lunch awaited us.
“You have been having a busy morning practising the flute,” said Holmes to Prince Alexander. “I hope we may have the pleasure of playing some duets together. I have brought my violin with me.”
“Yes, I have been playing this morning,” answered the young man; then he paused in amazement, and added, “But how on earth did you-- You couldn’t have seen my flute, because it’s in my room.”
“Your forefinger, my dear sir,” answered Holmes, “has the dent which is peculiar to flute players; that you have been playing this morning I concluded from the fact that you have not been out of doors, and that the music--music for piano and flute--on the drawing-room piano had been evidently quite recently ransacked by some one in a hurry to find a particular piece of music.”
“Your reputation does scant justice to your powers,” answered the young man; “but I doubt if you can guess what my sister has been doing all the morning.”
“I never guess,” answered Holmes; “but the problem is an extraordinarily simple one. The Princess has been occupied in making green pottery, and this morning has fired a kiln.”
“It’s quite true; how could you know it?” said the young Princess.
“In the drawing-room,” answered Sherlock Holmes, “I could not help noticing a certain tray. On this tray were a quantity of small green pots which were evidently just finished, and had, moreover, that particular grace peculiar to an amateur’s work. Your left hand, Princess, you will observe, is faintly tinged with red lead glaze, your cheeks are slightly flushed, and I noticed as you entered the room the smell of smoke which necessarily clings to a person who has been standing all the morning close to a kiln. You see how childishly simple are my methods.” The Prince and his family expressed surprise and delight. During the rest of luncheon Holmes kept his guests delighted with his varied knowledge.
As soon as luncheon was over we repaired to the drawing-room, in a corner of which an open card table had been placed.
“We always play cards after luncheon,” said the Prince; “I hope you and Mr. Watson will join us. It is no use telling you, Mr. Holmes,” he added, as he stuffed tobacco into a long cherry-wood pipe, “what game we play, because I am sure you know already, only I shall be curious to see how you arrived at the knowledge.”
“Certainly,” said Holmes; “it is true I have drawn certain conclusions, but I dare say I am mistaken. I exclude bridge, vindt, whist, and all kindred games, because your packs are obviously not full packs. I know, on the other hand, that more than two play, for you said _we_, and asked me and Watson to join you. I exclude piquet, therefore, and all kindred games. There remain préférence and the national German game, skat. As your nephew, who has been on a recent visit here, is studying at Heidelberg, I concluded that he had introduced the game of skat, of which German students are exceedingly fond, to you.”
“Perfectly correct,” said the young Prince; “but how did you know I had a cousin, and that he was at Heidelberg?”
“The photograph of a young student in the dress of the Saxo-Borussen Korps, which is in my bedroom, and the group of students, both signed Fritz von Interlacken, dated October 1907, told me that a student had been here recently; the inscription on the bowl of your pipe, Prince, ‘Fritz, S.L., Onkel Peter, July 1907,’ told me the rest.”
“Wonderful,” said the Prince; “and how simple it seems when one is told; but will you and Watson join us and cut?”
“Watson,” said Holmes, “plays nothing but whist, and I, although I know the principles of many card games, am an indifferent player in practice.”
“Papa,” broke in the young Princess, “the skat-book has gone.”
“Ring,” said the Prince. “We are new to the game,” he added, “and a small book, which contains the rules, and is, moreover, a scoring book, is of great assistance to us.” The butler entered the room, and declared that Prince Alexander took the book every evening to his room in the other house, and left it in the front hall in the morning.
“I take it to learn the rules,” said Prince Alexander, “but I always bring it back.”
“You can look in my room,” he added, to the butler, “but I know it isn’t there.” The butler went out.
“Did you bring it back this morning?” asked his father.
“I didn’t take it away last night. It was on the table, and I think I left the money I won in it, nine roubles in paper.”
“Then,” said the Prince, laughing, “this is a matter for Mr. Holmes, and, by the way, we forgot to tell him, at least I didn’t forget, but I purposely didn’t mention it at luncheon, that last night we had a robbery here.”
“Indeed,” said Holmes, folding his hands and looking up to the ceiling, “you interest me extremely.”
“I’m afraid it’s not very interesting,” said the Princess, “but, it’s rather comical. Our four best kitchen saucepans have been stolen, two or three of the Prince’s shirts, two or three of Alexander’s, and some inexpensive silver links belonging to him.”
“Would you like me to try and find the thief?” asked Holmes.
“We would be delighted if you could find the kitchen saucepans,” said the Princess, “as it is inconvenient for the cook. It doesn’t matter about the thief.”
“Do you give me leave to cross-examine the members of your household and your servants?” asked Holmes.
“Of course,” said the Princess, “we know it is no one in the house, but we have several bad characters in the village.”
The butler now entered once more, and said that he had searched everywhere in both houses and the book was nowhere to be found.
“Then we must play without it,” said the Princess. “Alexander, get some paper to score on; the book,” she added, “was most convenient, as it had blank leaves at the end, perforated at the edge, which one could tear off for the score. And one saw the score at a glance. You won’t play, Mr. Holmes?”