Part 11

“I said he is not here,” said the youth curtly. “I have other things to do besides answer questions. I’ll take the money.”

“No, no,” said Michael. “Mr. Slipitsky must sign the paper if I pay him the money—it is always so. I do not know who you are. I must see Mr. Slipitsky, I tell you.”

The youth got to his feet and looked closely at Michael, as if suspicious of his purpose. He had probably been shrewd enough to understand that Michael did not talk wholly as a peasant. Having scrutinized Michael, he turned and looked at Katerin, but she ignored his gaze and looked about the walls at the dirty old posters with pictures of Russian ships.

“Go away!” said the youth finally. “I can’t be troubled. This is no time to come asking for Mr. Slipitsky.”

“But I have come twenty versts this morning to see Mr. Slipitsky and give him the money and I must get back to my cow,” insisted Michael, seeing that he was making an impression on the youth despite the latter’s show of contempt. “And if I have to go back to my house, it will be two months again before I can pay——”

A black figure appeared at the top of the stairs while Michael was talking, and called down sharply, “Dazo! What are you doing? Who is there?”

“I don’t know who it is,” said Dazo. “Some fools in from the country who have lost their way and——”

“And is it a grand ball or something you are having down there with all this talk I hear, till I can’t do anything with my figures?” demanded the one above wrathfully. “Who is it come to talk with you so early in the morning? Maybe some rich gentleman from Moscow, eh?”

Michael now recognized the person above as Slipitsky, and knowing that they were safe at last, called out, “Mr. Slipitsky, I have come to pay you the money I owe to you.”

Slipitsky leaned forward and peered down the stairs. “What! Somebody would be paying me money and that stupid goat of a Dazo does not know what is wanted. Dazo! Is it money you would let slip away from me in these times? Oy! A poor man you would make of me, stupid one! Tell the gentleman to come up.”

But Michael did not wait to be urged by Dazo to go up. He started at once, and Katerin picked up the bundle and followed. Slipitsky remained standing in the dim light of the upper hall at the head of the stairs, peering down, and as Michael drew near the top, waved him forward. “Come this way to my office, please. And you—Dazo! Keep the door shut or I shall be beggared with buying wood from the Buriats. It is the house we wish to warm, and not all of Chita.”

Slipitsky trotted ahead of Michael and led the way into a tiny room. By the time Michael entered, the old Jew was standing behind a desk.

“You have come to pay me money?” he demanded when Katerin had entered the room. “Who is it, I ask?” he added, suspicious now because Michael had not uncovered his face.

Slipitsky was old and bent himself, with long black whiskers, a grave and wrinkled face, small black eyes that seemed to grasp what they looked at. He wore a round black cap on his head, and about his shoulders was a long black cape tied in at the middle with a green cord which had ended its usefulness as a curtain cord. His brow was furrowed, and he had no teeth that were visible, but his face had a benevolent expression as if he found it hard to be stern with people. There was something about his manner as he stood behind the desk which suggested a teacher. A wrinkled little smile lurked about his eyes—a ghost of a smile which had dissipated perhaps under the cruel times that had come. His breath smelled of boiled onions and the same odor pervaded the close little room.

“Who is it, I ask?” repeated Slipitsky when Michael made no answer but turned to close the door behind Katerin. The old Jew was on his guard at once, for he knew these muffled figures might be robbers or secret police sent by Zorogoff to arrest him.

“We have come to have a talk with you privately,” whispered Michael. Slipitsky’s face was instantly screwed up with terror, and his jaw dropped. For an instant he was in something of a panic and he drew back into a corner, for he knew that no rude peasant would speak so correctly as had this stranger before him. And whispers always meant secrecy if not imminent danger.

“You are not peasants!” mumbled Slipitsky. “You have come in here by a trick! You do not speak now as peasants! Who has sent you here to make trouble for me in my house?”

Michael whipped the muffler down from his face by way of answer and thrust his face forward into the light from the frosted window so that Slipitsky might recognize him without further talk.

“Prophets of Israel!” cried the Jew, suddenly relieved of his worry as he recognized Michael. “You are dead!”

“Not yet, by the kindness of God,” whispered Michael, and turning to his daughter, said, “Also Katerin Stephanovna has come with me. You must hide us both, for we are beset by the Ataman and have fled away from our house to save our lives.”

“True enough, it is Michael Alexandrovitch, his Excellence who was Governor!” whispered Slipitsky as if assuring himself that he was not deceived by his eyes. He clapped his hands over his ears. “It was said that you were both dead! Four months ago I heard you had been killed! Is it that you have risen from the dead by a miracle, my old friends? By the patriarchs! This is a sight for me! Both of you—and dressed in poor rags like serfs come in from a farm to sell butter!”

Katerin had exposed her face and smiled joyfully at the old Jew.

“Take care or you will be heard speaking to us and we shall be betrayed,” warned Michael. “No one must know we are here, or Zorogoff comes——”

“Enough!” cried Slipitsky, and ran out from behind his desk, keys jangling in his pockets, and shot the bolt on the door. “As you say, the place is like a beehive with spies,” he whispered, turning back to Michael. “That rascal, Dazo, below stairs is one of Zorogoff’s men, I know! The Cossacks made me make a place for him there at the door to watch—but I know he is an underground for the Ataman!”

“Then we shall be delivered,” said Michael, pulling up his muffler over his face again. “If it be already known to him that we are here——”

“We must fool him,” said Slipitsky. “What is the good of having a head if we do not use it? You must go out again and——”

“But where shall we stay?” demanded Michael, alarmed at the Jew’s saying they must go. To be turned into the streets again meant certain capture by soldiers of the Ataman.

“Please, you must hide us for our lives!” pleaded Katerin. “If you do not hide us somewhere we shall be killed!”

“We shall all be killed!” exclaimed Slipitsky. “Take off your covering and let me see your face again, mistress! Ah, yes, it is you! Can you doubt that I will not do what I can for old friends? Be patient.”

“Then we can stay?” asked Katerin. “But what of the spy below? Will he not reveal us?”

“We are desperate,” urged Michael. “Zorogoff has given us the mental torture—if he finds us again he will take my daughter to his palace to——”

“Toosh!” exploded Slipitsky. “Zorogoff is not to find you. I have known persecution in my day—who of my people have not? And in your time you were good to some of my friends. Ah, I never forget, my friend! I will hide you well. But if Zorogoff knows, then we are all dead together—as dead as the prophets! That Ataman is a robber, Excellence! Every week I must pay him money till I am beggared. Taxes, he calls it! Is the last kopeck from a poor man taxes, I ask? And every name that goes in the book he watches, for fear I would have a stranger under my roof who might be a spy against him! And that dog of a Dazo is his eyes. But we must fool Dazo, as you shall see.”

“He will know if we do not go away again,” said Katerin. “How are we to fool him on that?”

“Toosh! Who is to suspect that the two peasants who came this morning to pay me money were his Excellence the General and his daughter? It is how you get out again, as Dazo sees it, that gives me troubles. But I shall put you in rooms and no names in the book for the spies. So we must fool that stupid one below. Wait here for me, Excellence.”

The Jew unbolted the door with cautious fingers and looked down the hall. Then he went out and closed the door after him to look down the stairs. He saw Dazo lying on the bench, his back to the stove, apparently napping.

“Dazo!” yelled Slipitsky frantically, at the same time beginning a wild caper like a dance, “Dazo! Stop the two—the old man and the woman with the cabbages! Stop them I say, or I am ruined for twenty rubles! Oh, oh, oh!”

Dazo rolled off the bench and sat up, staring about him in bewilderment, startled out of a sound doze by the screams of Slipitsky.

“What is the trouble?” called the youth. “What has happened now?”

“Enough has happened!” cried Slipitsky. “The two peasants who came in with the cabbages to pay me money! Stop them! Oh, I am ruined!”

“But I saw no one!” cried Dazo. “I tell you no one has come in or gone out from this place while——”

“Stop the talk and run!” screamed Slipitsky, wringing his hands in agony. “I signed the receipt but the rubles they gave me were bad! Twenty rubles, I say, I lose! They just went out the door while you were dreaming of the wife you beat in Irkutsk! They just went out the door! Run for them and drag them back by their hair! Run, run—hurry!”

“You are crazy,” muttered Dazo, but he reached for his coat to the wooden hook on the wall, not sure now that the two strangers had not evaded him while he was asleep.

“I am crazy for my twenty rubles!” raged Slipitsky, and Dazo pulled on his coat and dashed into the street.

Slipitsky ran back to his little office and let himself in.

“Come!” he commanded. “I will put you in rooms, now that I have sent that fool of a Dazo down the Sofistkaya looking for you.”

Michael and Katerin followed him down the long hall. The Jew put a big brass key into a door, and, turning the lock, thrust Michael into the room and handed him the key. “Keep quiet till I come with food, and if any one knocks do not answer. We have fooled that fox of a Dazo, and we shall fool the Ataman!”

And the old Jew put his fingers to his lips against the thanks which Michael and Katerin would have expressed, slipped out through the door and was gone, wailing through the hall about the fictitious twenty rubles which he had lost by the carelessness of Dazo, the spy.

XIII

KATERIN PLANS TO MEET THE AMERICAN

SLIPITSKY returned to the Kirsakoffs in an hour, bringing with him a small samovar, some bread, and a cold partridge. In his pocket he carried a bottle of wine for Michael.

“You will need something to warm and hearten you, Excellence, for there is not much warmth,” he said when Katerin had let him in.

Michael was sitting on the bed, his boots off and his eyes blinking, for he had been sleeping, being worn out with waiting up for the return of Wassili the night before, the preparation for the flight, and the journey afoot into the city.

“Ah, that is good!” said Michael. “I am famished, though I have had a good sleep—without bad dreams, for now we are out of danger, old friend.”

Slipitsky turned and looked at him in surprise. “Out of danger! Do not think my hotel is so safe, Excellence. Zorogoff may ask for all my rooms any day for more of his officers—and when he takes the notion he searches the place. So you are still in danger—unless you have a plan for escape from the city. Surely you and the daughter must have some scheme for getting out by an underground!”

“Oh, true!” said Michael, taking a glass of wine from Katerin’s hand. “That is why we have come—there is an American here?”

“Friends have sent an American officer to us,” explained Katerin to the Jew. “Is he not here in the house?”

“So-o!” whispered Slipitsky, betraying his amazement. “It is you he has come for? And that is why so little has been seen of him! Two nights he has been under the roof and he has not stirred out, but sits all day smoking by a samovar! I have seen him in the hall once—a big fellow, maybe a colonel! And he has paid a week in advance, too, but I could not read what he wrote in the book for Dazo. So he got word to you that he was here—well, that is good for you.”

“We have heard that he was in the city looking for us,” said Michael. “But we are not sure—we must look into the matter. But I doubt if Zorogoff will dare interfere with an American—or us if the American has come to help us.”

Slipitsky sat down and pulled his beard thoughtfully while Katerin busied herself with brewing the tea at the samovar.

“It is hard for us to tell what that devil of an Ataman will do with anybody,” said Slipitsky. “But an American—that is different. So your friends have done this for you! And the American has sent word to you that he is here waiting for you, eh?”

“We heard it through Ilya Andreitch, a peasant, who came to our house last night with the news,” explained Katerin. “But when Ilya was sent here with a message last night he was killed. But the American did not tell Ilya to go to us—Ilya got news from friends of his.”

Slipitsky opened his eyes at that, and rolled them thoughtfully. “Then the American did not send the word to you by Ilya?” He was puzzled—and troubled again. “And Ilya was shot? That is bad.”

“We shall have to be very cautious about it,” put in Michael, “for I am afraid of a trap.”

“Ilya got the news from Rimsky, an old cigarette-seller,” said Katerin.

“What!” exclaimed Slipitsky. “From that old liar? He will say anything for ten kopecks. What does he know about our American? Rimsky has not been here to see him. I tell you, there is something wrong about this—it may be that Rimsky is a spy.”

“Ah, yes!” said Michael, frowning thoughtfully. “What if Rimsky is a spy, as you say, and Ilya was fooled about the American’s having come for us? That is what I said from the first!”

“But it may be that the American asked Rimsky about us before he came to the hotel at all,” said Katerin. “And perhaps Rimsky gave the news to poor Ilya, and perhaps the news was truth. Then would it not be right?”

“I would like to see something that is right if Rimsky has had a hand in it,” grumbled Slipitsky, who was getting more worried as he considered the matter. He was reluctant to ask too many questions, for he supposed there might be angles to the situation which the Kirsakoffs would prefer not to discuss.

But Katerin was becoming alarmed by Slipitsky’s doubts. She realized well enough that there had never been any proof beyond Ilya’s word that the American had come seeking them, and that Ilya himself had been dependent upon what Rimsky had said. But she did feel that there was protection of some kind for them in the bare fact that an American was under the same roof with them now, and that Zorogoff might not dare persecute them openly or take them from the hotel. She was determined to appeal to the American, but she wanted time to make her own plans. What she feared now was that Slipitsky, by his suspicions and doubts, would put her father back into his mood of dejection and discouragement. So she laughed gayly and served her father with tea and the cold partridge.

“I shall find some way of talking with the American,” she declared to Slipitsky. “You must help me in some plan.”

“I can go to him and tell him that I know where the Kirsakoffs may be found,” suggested the Jew. “He will tell me, I think, at once, if he seeks you or not.”

“I am not so sure,” said Katerin. “He may not want to discuss a secret with you—he will be suspicious of any person who talks with him about us, if he is trying to find us unbeknownst to others in the city. He might deny that he seeks us, and thus we should be deprived of his help.”

“True,” said Slipitsky. “The owl says little but thinks much, so what he knows is his own, which is wisdom. We need not fear the American—I wish there were more of them here. But this old fox of a Rimsky! It would be well to know what he is at.”

“No,” said Michael. “You cannot go running to a stranger and saying you know where we are hidden. And we cannot go to him and make ourselves known till we know for sure that he is seeking us. The matter will have to be arranged with more care.”

“Yes, Excellence, the wolf knows the forest and its ways,” said the Jew. “We must be wise about it, for there is no tax on wisdom. It would be well for me to bring Rimsky to the house and question him about what he knows—and what he said to Ilya.”

“You say you do not trust Rimsky,” said Katerin. “You say he is a liar—and may be a spy for the Ataman. Even if the American asked Rimsky about us, Rimsky might lie about it—and even if he tells the truth, whatever he says we will mistrust it. And we must be careful that we do not set his tongue wagging in the city. Till we have thought more about it, we must be most cautious.”

“Then shall I ask the American about it, mistress?” asked the Jew.

“No, thank you—I shall go and see the American myself.”

“See the American yourself!” gasped Michael in astonishment.

“Yes, I shall see him,” replied Katerin calmly. “That is the simplest and best way to learn what we want to know.”

“That is sensible,” agreed Slipitsky.

“You mean that you will go and tell him who you are?” demanded Michael, his horror intensifying at the idea the more he realized that Katerin meant what she was saying.

“He may know who I am when he sees me,” said Katerin.

“It must not be done, my daughter,” said Michael, his agitation only growing. “We can trust no one, especially not a strange man who comes from whom we know not. This is no time to be rash, and I cannot let you put yourself into danger.”

“If this American has come seeking Michael Kirsakoff and his daughter, will he not have descriptions of us? And if he is not seeking us, how is he to know who I am? I shall not tell him my name, you may be assured of that, unless he knows me—or unless he tells me that he seeks us. So what can the danger be, my father?”

“There is some truth in what you say,” admitted Michael, as he resumed eating the partridge. “If he knows you, he knows, and that would mean he has come from friends. But if he does not recognize you, and he does not tell you that he is seeking us, what have you learned? And how are you to go talking with a man you do not know? I tell you you must not take risks on what Ilya has said!”

“That is wisdom,” assented the Jew, nodding his head slowly. “You must always test the ice before you walk upon it, else you will find yourself in the river with the fish.”

“Tell me, where is the room of the American?” asked Katerin.

“The other way—down at the end of the hall with windows that look up the Sofistkaya, mistress.”

“Can you put us in rooms near him?”

“Yes, mistress, I could. When Dazo goes out later in the day, it can be accomplished secretly. Is it that you intend to watch the American? You will see little of him if he keeps to his room as he has.”

“What good would it do us to watch him?” asked Michael. “It would tell us nothing to see him going and coming.”

“No,” said Katerin. “But I wish to be near him for protection in case the Ataman’s officers come here. Now, have you a servant for us who can be trusted not to talk about us?”

“Yes, mistress—a sister of my cousin. She waits upon some of the Ataman’s officers who live in the house. It is she who will bring you your samovars and your food. She is safe—not too much sense and little to say to any one.”

“Then this is my plan,” said Katerin. “If you will contrive to put us near the American officer, the next thing will be to take care that when the American rings for a samovar the girl does not take it to him, but brings it to us. And I shall carry the samovar to him. He, thinking I am but a samovar girl, may talk with me and I may learn if he seeks among the people of the city for a man by the name of Kirsakoff.”

“A Kirsakoff a servant! You, Katerin Stephanovna, a samovar girl in this hotel! How can you think of such a thing?” cried Michael.

Katerin laughed merrily and tossed her head, already in a mood for the plan which she had evolved. “I would not be a samovar girl because I play at it, my father,” she said. “What is it but fun? Who can help the Kirsakoffs better than God and themselves?”

“But I say you are not to be a servant!” objected Michael.

“Better a living servant than a dead aristocrat,” replied Katerin. “What harm can come of it? Is it not wise to be known here as a servant? We have come here as peasants and wish to be known as such for safety. Look at my old black dress! I have on my slippers—see—and I can let down my hair. How will an American know that I am not a samovar girl—unless, as we have said, he recognizes me at once as a Kirsakoff? And I can talk with him, perhaps. He will not be afraid of saying things to a girl who is a servant which he would keep from others.”

“And what then?” asked Michael with a frown. “Do you think that this American is going about telling his secret business to any samovar girl? Fi! You must take him for a fool before you have seen him!”

“I am afraid that he will know you are not a servant, if I am allowed to say my opinion, mistress,” said the Jew dolefully.

“But he is an American,” persisted Katerin. “He probably knows little Russian. But what I wish to learn at once is whether he will know me for a Kirsakoff. And if he does not recognize me, and yet sees that I am not of the servant class, all the more reason why he should suspect that I might know the Kirsakoffs. So he might ask me if I know them. Why should he not ask a samovar girl, when he has asked old Rimsky for General Kirsakoff? Do you think I will only take his food to him and then run away without a word?”

“And what else can you do?” asked her father.

“I shall talk to him—of the weather, and the troubles that have come upon the people. And if he does not tell me why he has come to Chita, I shall try and learn it from him. Can he speak Russian, do you know, Mr. Slipitsky?”

“He must speak a little,” said the Jew. “He is alone, and he has made his way about. He talked with Dazo, who knows nothing but Russian, the stupid ox. But the American wrote in the book in English and I could make nothing of it—just a scrawl.”

“Then he will be able to talk a little with me,” said Katerin. “At least, enough so that I may gain his confidence and be able to talk with him in a way of gossip about General Kirsakoff who was Governor here.”

“By the Prophets!” said Slipitsky. “The mistress Katerin Stephanovna should be in the secret police, Excellence! It is all a good plan, and the mistress should be allowed to have her way in it.”

“I wish there were some other way to go about it than this business of being a samovar girl,” said Michael as he lighted a cigarette. “We shall know how wise it all is when we see what we shall learn by it. But I shall not prevent its being done, for we are in danger enough, and making danger for you, my friend.”

“Think not of my danger,” said the Jew.

“Then I shall do it,” said Katerin. “We cannot delay, and we cannot take outsiders, like this man Rimsky, into our confidence. Our safety now depends upon keeping secret where we are, and upon making the best of such time as we have. Who knows when the Ataman will learn where we have gone from the house? And you shall be well paid for your help, Mr. Slipitsky, and for what you have done.”

“Ah, it is not for money,” said the Jew. “When are you to begin as samovar girl, mistress? I must make the arrangements and be sure that everything is ready.”