Part 8

“No, it is that I am getting old and may as well spend my money before it falls into the hands of robbers,” said Rimsky. “Soon I shall go to meet the dead. I pick up a few rubles a day. What is the use of keeping them these days? I want to spend them with my friends, and you are a good fellow and a great joker, Ilya Andreitch.”

“True, I can make jokes if I have the wine,” said Ilya, and hastened to take a swig from the first glass poured.

They proceeded to talk of nothings, and finished the bottle.

“Fetch another!” Rimsky called to the girl, “and I’ll drink a health to the rings in your ears, my damsel. When you were—what am I saying?—when I was younger you would not have escaped without a kiss.”

“You had better be putting your grandchildren to bed,” retorted the girl, but she brought the bottle.

Ilya was suddenly filled with a desire to be modest in his drinking. He felt it would not be wise to abuse such a show of hospitality on the part of Rimsky. And the _moujik’s_ crafty brain suspected that there was a purpose behind Rimsky’s unlimited generosity. Folks were not so free-handed without having good cause, he reasoned. So for every full glass that Rimsky drank, Ilya managed to dispose of but half a glass. He had a notion that if he could get Rimsky drunk there might be part of a bottle left which could be made away with and the joyous occasion could be carried on alone into the night and perhaps the following day. Also, he took good care that Rimsky always paid in advance by making a joke with the gypsy girl that Rimsky had no more money. Rimsky’s generosity made Ilya suspicious.

“Pooh! Money!” said Rimsky, when the third bottle was brought. “I have enough money to buy all the vodka in the city.”

“That’s the vodka talking,” sneered Ilya. “I feel as if I could buy a farm, but it would be another matter for me to find the money. That is the way with you.”

“Don’t go on so with big talk,” warned Rimsky, “or I will begin to talk of the holy medals.”

“Talk and the devil take you!” cried Ilya, thumping the bottle down on the table angrily. “If you do I’ll go my way and wish a curse on you!”

“Sit still!” commanded Rimsky. “I’ve money enough, I tell you. If not, I can go and borrow from my rich friends.”

Ilya laughed so loudly at this that he disturbed the drunken Buriat, who lifted his black head from the table and glared about the room. He looked like a mandarin, with his long thin drooping mustaches.

“But I tell you I have rich friends,” insisted Rimsky. “I could go now and get a hundred rubles if I needed them—yes, twenty and a hundred and no interest. Kirsakoff would let me have them, and no questions asked, and nothing about when they should be paid back.”

“What!” exclaimed Ilya, staring at Rimsky. “You say the old Governor would lend you twenty and a hundred rubles! _Tfu!_ That’s crazy talk!”

“Yes! You think I don’t know the old Governor, eh! Well, Kirsakoff is a friend of mine, you had better know that.”

“Pooh!” snorted Ilya. “You are an old mud-head! You don’t even know where the old Governor lives in the city, and you sit there telling to me that he is your friend! Oh, ho, ho!”

“Perhaps you think you are the only one who knows where Kirsakoff lives? You are a fool who thinks he is wise, and that’s the worst fool of all.”

Ilya was cautious at once. He gave Rimsky a careful look, but Rimsky paid no attention to the look.

“Who told you I said I knew where Kirsakoff lived?” demanded Ilya.

“You said it yourself. I heard you say it last Butter Week in the bazaar. You were drunk and you went boasting about to the old man from Pischenko with the red boots. I heard you say it, Ilya Andreitch.”

Ilya ruffled his brow and tried to remember when he had been talking to a man with red boots from Pischenko. He knew no one in that town who had red boots—unless it was the butcher’s assistant who married the cake-maker.

“True,” said Ilya. “I might have known then where Kirsakoff lived. I don’t deny it. Perhaps I was drunk Butter Week. It wasn’t my fault if I was sober. But that was a long time ago as time runs now—and I don’t know where Kirsakoff lives now. And if I did, I wouldn’t tell you.”

Rimsky laughed good-naturedly. “Let us have another drink. You are a good fellow. Of course you do not know where Michael Alexandrovitch lives. If you did, you could have money, as I have. It is worth money to know where the old Governor lives.”

Ilya saw that Rimsky was getting very drunk and seeking an argument.

“If you knew where Kirsakoff lived, who would pay?” asked Ilya, becoming greedy at the mention of money.

“Who? There are many. That is something I do not want to talk about, Ilya. Hold your tongue,” and Rimsky picked up his glass and filled it again.

Ilya drank with sad mien, turning over in his mind Rimsky’s statement that it was worth money to know where Kirsakoff lived. If that were true, Ilya argued to himself, he should have the money, for he knew where Kirsakoff lived with his daughter in an old log house in the outskirts of the city.

“I don’t intend to hold my tongue,” Ilya announced. “What I want to know is who would pay money to know where Kirsakoff lives!”

Rimsky was startled by the suddenness and vigor with which Ilya had put the matter before him. And Ilya leaned across the table, with a big and dirty fist thrust forward.

“Who?” asked Rimsky. “Why do you ask me that? What is there to fight over? We are good friends—we are—you are friend to me, or——”

Rimsky swayed in his chair and could not finish. He made an effort to rally his drugged brain, but slipped deeper into the chair and his eyes closed on him despite all he could do to keep them open. His right arm flopped across the table limply, as useless as a dead seal’s flipper.

“Everybody knows where Michael Kirsakoff lives,” went on Ilya. “Why should any one pay money for what every one knows. That knowledge is not worth a beggar’s kopeck.” Ilya lied, but he sought to learn all he could before Rimsky got too deep into drunken slumber.

“True,” muttered the befuddled Rimsky. “You talk true talk, Ilya Andreitch. But why do you fight with me when I can’t see? What did I say?”

“You talked about there being money in knowing where Kirsakoff lived,” accused Ilya.

Rimsky tried to remember why he had said any such thing. The matter must be as Ilya said—no one would give a beggar’s kopeck to know where Kirsakoff lived. For that matter, Rimsky cared about nothing. The world was a very pleasant place for all people said about bad times. He could feel himself slipping away into a delicious unconsciousness, and he talked aloud the thoughts which crossed his mind.

“There is something wrong about this,” he confided to himself, unaware that Ilya could hear what was said. Then he went on, head on chest, and almost under the table, muttering into his whiskers.

“The American officer—no, a Russian—well, the American officer—he wants to know where Michael lives. And he—will pay well. Didn’t he come to my place asking about the old Governor? And where did he go? Yes, the Dauria, I remember, even if I am drunk—to the Dauria, where the Bolsheviki smashed all the windows. I know. I remember the time my father’s cow fell in the river. Was Ilya there? No. How could Ilya be there—I am dreaming now. Let us all—be merry, for this is Carnival. Am I not a young man? That is right—dance—dance——”

Rimsky began to snore softly. The gypsy girl came and grinned at Ilya, who reached out unsteadily and plucked the flame from the candle.

“Let him sleep,” said Ilya to the girl. “He is a good fellow,” and putting the cork back into the vodka-bottle which was half full by the best of good luck, he slipped it into his pocket, pulled his ragged old coat about his shoulders and tightened the rope belt. Then he slipped out of the restaurant, chuckling at his cleverness at putting Rimsky under the table and learning something which might put money into his own purse. Besides, he had the half-bottle of vodka.

He made up his mind to go at once to the house of Michael Alexandrovitch Kirsakoff and sell the news he had heard—an American officer was at the Hotel Dauria and wanted to find the old Governor. Perhaps Michael would give five rubles for that news—if not five, then four, anyhow, a piece of boiled partridge. But Ilya decided that he would do his best to get five rubles. Michael Kirsakoff had plenty of money, and who was he anyway?—once a Governor, true, but no better now than Ilya Andreitch.

VIII

PETER LAYS HIS PLANS

PETER went back to the Hotel Dauria after his talk with Rimsky. The sleepy-eyed youth who had promised a room, carried Peter’s baggage to the upper floor, where Peter signed the register in a cage-like little office.

Then they went on down a hall past a dining room which was deserted. Peter looked in. It was filled with battered tables, tubbed rubber plants in the window sills, and crazy chairs which had been used in defense and had legs in splints.

The walls had been stripped of paper. The mirrors of the buffet-counter at one end of the room had been smashed out and triangles of broken glass still stuck in the frames. The curtains had been pulled from the poles over the windows and the doors. Painted decorations on the wainscoting had been smeared with the contents of catsup and vinegar bottles, which had burst against the walls like star shells and the acids had discolored the pictures of the crude drawings so that the wall was spotted and leprous-looking.

Peter was taken to a large room at the end of the hall. It had three double windows overlooking the end of a side street that ran into the Sofistkaya, with a view of the latter. He could see the old post-house and the roof of Rimsky’s hut sticking up between two higher buildings.

There was an iron bed without bedding. There was a standing screen in front of it. The chairs had been broken but were repaired. There were slashes in the woodwork about the door where bayonets had evidently been thrust at former guests. And some of the guests had fared badly, judging by the dark stains on the old oilcloth which covered the floor.

The plaster of the walls was pitted with bullet-holes, especially opposite the windows, and the panes of glass were newly puttied and still marked with the thumb-prints of the workmen.

“Can I have my meals served in the room?” asked Peter. The youth yawned.

“Yes. If you pay extra. Ring this bell three times for the samovar girl,” and he pointed to a button in the wall near the door, and the youth departed, as if afraid that he would be asked to do something.

There was an electric drop lamp on a writing table, and running water in a little sink against the wall behind the screen. There was a tall wardrobe set against a second door which evidently led to another room.

It was hard for Peter to realize that Chita could be so modern. And the room, poor as it was, seemed like a palace to Peter. His mind had been readjusted to the things he had known as a boy by his visit to Rimsky. Peter Petrovitch Gorekin would have thought himself a king to have a room like this one in which Peter Gordon was to live.

But there was no Peter Gordon now. Peter Gorekin was back in Chita. The scene which opened to him from the windows had been for twenty years in the back of his brain. The little hut, the post-house, the Sofistkaya! He found it hard to believe that he had ever been away from Chita at all.

He sat down by the window. The mild heat from the radiator had thawed away most of the frost in the panes and he looked out over the city. Things that had been but memories were now real, truly existing before his eyes in spite of his years of trying to blur their images out of his mind.

The old superstitions of peasants and exiles which he had learned in his father’s hut as a boy returned to his mind—tales of werewolves who took the shapes of men for diabolical purposes. Was there not something in it all? Was not he himself something like a werewolf? Was he not a Russian in an American coat? Michael Kirsakoff would never suspect an American officer of being the son of a dead exile. Nor would Kirsakoff suspect an American officer of being the same poor boy who had been thrown into prison for a whim—now come for vengeance.

The mysticism inherent in his race, the queer inarticulate yearnings and the dissatisfactions of the Slavic soul, came to the surface in Peter’s consciousness. But now he had knowledge of things, and power, and the means of carrying out his own ends. He would play the game carefully to an end in Chita, and then go on to Irkutsk without any one’s suspecting that the American officer had killed Kirsakoff.

He began to think of his return to Chita as a holy mission. Affairs had turned out well for him from the first. He had managed to get to Siberia instead of going to France. He had managed to get himself ordered to Irkutsk, and had slipped away from his Russian orderly with no one the wiser that Peter Gordon was really a Russian. And there was every evidence that Kirsakoff was still alive and that he was still in Chita. The reticence of Rimsky in discussing Kirsakoff was proof enough to Peter that the former Governor might be found somewhere in the Valley of Despair.

He took off his tunic and rang for a samovar. A slattern of a girl, dirty and unkempt, came trembling to the door to ask what was wanted. She was not more than fifteen—round-cheeked, with scared blue eyes, and brown hair down her back. She was wearing men’s cast-off old shoes. Peter looked at her with pity.

“Will you bring me some spice-cakes and a samovar?” he asked gently.

“Yes, master,” she said, and turned to escape.

“Don’t be frightened,” said Peter. “I am an American.”

“Yes, master,” she repeated. But she had no comprehension of what he had said.

“Here are five rubles for you,” said Peter, holding out the note to her.

But she fled through the door as he moved toward her.

“The same old system working,” thought Peter, as he watched the poor girl running down the hall. “The poor people frightened out of their wits by the ruling class! Damn such a country!”

He closed the door. He realized now that oppression was not dead in the country. His years in America had dimmed his memories of such scenes. He had begun to think that the revolution had bettered conditions for the people, that in the twenty years since he was a boy in Siberia there had been improvement.

The old rage began to grow in him again. He lusted to kill. He wanted to help the people, aside from his own blood vengeance. He wondered if his dead father had not been able to help in having the son return to Chita. His return might be in the nature of a destiny which it would be sinful to avoid, even divine in its workings. It was all as if some controlling star had put power into his hands, and had swung him back to the land of his boyhood. It would be impossible to go against fate. He felt that no man could stand out against what had every sign of being a directed destiny.

Peter was filled with a strange exaltation, a very frenzy of joy over the thought that it would now be possible to pay off his old debt of revenge against Michael Kirsakoff. The words of an old folk song began to run through his mind and he hummed it gently, pausing to catch some of the almost forgotten words.

He got out his razor and shaved himself before the big wall mirror between the windows. The peace and quiet of his room were luxuries after the days and nights of living and sleeping on the pounding train among the Czech soldiers. He had time now for careful planning, and he desired to make the acquaintance of Kirsakoff at leisure, arrange the details of how the Governor should be killed and then carry through the project with all possible skill so that his tracks might be covered. There would be many pitfalls to avoid, many nicely balanced circumstances.

It would not be enough for Peter merely to kill Kirsakoff. The Governor must know who brought death to him, must understand before he was sent into eternity that it was Peter Petrovitch Gorekin, son of the bootmaker, who took vengeance.

The girl came with the samovar and the cakes and left them on the table. She fled again without taking the five-ruble note which Peter had left upon the table for her.

Peter sat by the window and ate and drank. The sun dropped behind the rim of the hill and twilight came swiftly. In the street below a line of rude carts passed, drawn by frosty ponies with their drivers plodding along behind the carts. They walked like men in their sleep, oblivious of everything about them and steeped in the torturing cold.

Farther up the street four men were drifting about aimlessly, tipsy with vodka. They drew together at times to engage in maudlin argument, and staggered about like clumsy bears, lurching at one another in wild plunges and falling in the street.

The four roisterers disappeared. A squad of Japanese soldiers came stumbling down the street, evidently going on guard at the station for the night. They appeared to be half frozen, but they doggedly maintained some semblance of military formation. Their heads were so wrapped in cloths that they could hardly see their way, and the fur straps across their faces were white with frost from the moisture of their nostrils. Their big shoes were stuffed with straw, which hung out over the tops. The agonizing cold, despite the heavy clothing of the men, had penetrated to their bodies and had chilled them to a condition akin to lethargy. They walked as if through semiliquid air which impeded their movements.

Peter remained by the window smoking, while the frost gradually grew up the windows. He was wondering how he could find Kirsakoff. It would not do to make direct inquiries. It might be possible to draw more from Rimsky, but it would be wise to wait before pressing the cigarette-seller to talk about Kirsakoff. The graybeard would be suspicious—he was already suspicious that Peter had some other motive in going to the hut than buying cigarettes. Yes, it would be safer to keep away from Rimsky for a few days, and perhaps wise not to move about the city too much and start gossip. He might be watched at first, but after a few days his presence in the city would be taken as a matter of course. Then he could begin his quest for Kirsakoff.

With this decision for the future, Peter prepared for bed.

IX

ILYA USES HIS WITS

ILYA ANDREITCH, having left Rimsky in a state of gorgeous befuddlement at the gypsy’s restaurant, hurried up the street to the house of Michael Kirsakoff and his daughter. It would be great news, the coming of an American who wished to find Kirsakoff. It might be a government matter, for as everybody with an ounce of brains in his head knew, the Americans were going to take full control of Russia—some wise folk even said that the Americans would annex Russia as a province of America. Others said the Czar had gone to America and had conquered it, including Venice. Those were matters which Ilya considered in spare moments; just now he felt that this news of the American needed full attention.

Ilya could see the glowing coals of a sentinels’ bonfire up near the church. Also, there were sounds of music and singing in the direction of a barrack, and the rattle of a droshky coming across the little bridge over the Ingoda. So he did not feel too lonely. There was no moon up yet, but the stars were out and hanging low. The thin, sweet air drenched his lungs, and cleared his brain somewhat.

Now he heard a man walking near by. Ilya stopped to listen, cocking his head to one side. But when Ilya stopped, the man stopped also—and then Ilya realized that it was his own footsteps which he had heard, crunching the hard snow musically. He laughed discreetly, taking care that the sentries should not hear him, and started on again toward the outer rim of the city.

But he was a little afraid that he might not get past some of the sentry groups without being stopped and questioned, or perhaps arrested. He got off the hard walk and into the center of the sandy street, so that his boots would not make a noise. He got out his bottle—the bottle which he had taken from the restaurant table—and had a swig from it to give himself courage. It would be no simple matter to go talking to Kirsakoff, who, though an Excellence, was a cruel old bones of a man.

But Ilya reflected that times had changed. He was as good as anybody now, and knew as much as anybody. The revolution had done that for him, and a revolution was good fun. Was not even Rimsky, who had once held himself to be better than a _moujik_, now buying vodka for _moujiks_? Hurrah for the revolution! And as for that, hadn’t he fooled Rimsky and drawn from him the news that the American had come to see Kirsakoff? That was proof enough as to who had the better wit. Ilya gave himself credit for the manner in which he had handled the whole matter.

Kirsakoff should give at least five rubles for the news, not a kopeck less. Ilya settled that to his own satisfaction, took another swig, and went on. A wolf howled in the hills above the city, and Ilya crossed himself against the wiles of the devil.

He passed the black dome of the church. The air was like crystal and nothing cast a shadow, not even the iron fence about the old cemetery of the church. And when the stars are so bright and hang so low that nothing throws a shadow, there are witches about.

Ilya hurried on, getting more nervous with every step, till he was in the outer limits of the city. Then he crossed some old gardens to get in among the log houses which stood at the end of the street. In that way he avoided a group of sentries who were singing about their fire.

He located Kirsakoff’s house. It stood on a corner of two streets, with a log wall enclosing the _dvor_, or courtyard—the garden, the well, the wagon-sheds. The windows let out no light, but stood out like tablets of ivory set into the dark house, their frosty panes glistening under the stars.

Ilya went round to the great gate. Some old water casks were lying about it in disorder. One of them was close to the wall of the court. Ilya moved it a little, and mounting it, reached up to some old cords and dead vines running along the top of the logs. He took off his mittens and felt for a cord that had tied in it a certain number of knots. He pulled it thrice, and then climbed down from the cask, and stood in close to the wall, so that any person looking up the street would not see him, for his figure would be merged with the dark background of the wall.

A sentry-fire burned redly out in the end of the street. A few dark figures were visible about it. Somewhere Ilya heard a Cossack challenge, and the rattle of a riflebolt in the crisp air. A pig began to squeal away in the direction of the Chinese quarter. Ilya missed the friendly barking of dogs, for the dogs of the city had somehow disappeared since the troubles came and many people were starving. The unnatural stillness of the night held a covert menace, as if all creatures, humans and wild beasts, were walking about on their toes in dread, or crouched to spring upon some lurking enemy. It was likely that hill tigers were about. The occasional howl of a wolf seemed to be tinged with a note of triumph, as if they were waiting for their old wilderness to be restored to them by men. The wolves were once more hunting close to the city and getting arrogant and fat. Men were too busy hunting each other to waste time or ammunition on the great packs of timber wolves.

A small door in the wall, close to where Ilya stood, opened inward a few inches, slowly and cautiously, for the frost cracked the ancient hinges with sharp complaints.

“It is Ilya—Ilya Andreitch,” he whispered into the aperture of the gate.