MAKAR’S CANVASS.
PARMET now gave most of his time to the secret movement, making himself useful in a variety of ways. His great unrealised ambition, however, was to work in an underground printing office—an offence which at the period was punished by a long term of penal servitude in Siberia. He had a feeling as though nothing one did for the movement could be regarded as a vital service to the cause of free speech as long as it fell short of typesetting in a secret printing establishment. He had applied for work of this kind several times, but his proverbial absent-mindedness stood in his way. Being in the habit of reading some book or newspaper as he walked through the streets, he would sometimes catch himself drinking in the contents of some “underground” publication in this manner. Once as he stood on a street corner intent upon a revolutionary leaflet, he heard an infuriated whisper:
“Imbecile! Scoundrel!”
When he raised his eyes he saw the ample back of a compactly built man dressed in citizen’s clothes except for a broad military cap with a red band. This was “the Janitor,” so nicknamed because he made it his business to go the rounds of “conspiracy houses” every morning and to pick a quarrel with those of their occupants who had neglected to furnish their windows with safety signals or were guilty of some other manifestation of “Russian breadth.” The episode antedated the above conversation between Makar and Pavel by two months, and the medical student had not seen the Janitor since. He dreaded to meet him. At this minute, however, he was just the man he wanted to see, for it was he who had taken the initiative in getting the Dandy into the Third Section. Accordingly, Pavel had no sooner left him than he betook himself to a place at which he expected to find that revolutionist. The place was the lodging of a man who was known in the organisation as Purring Cat—a nickname based on his shaggy eyebrows and moustache. His face was almost entirely overgrown with hair. Short of stature, with a thick dark beard that reached down to his knees and with blue eyes that peered up from under his stern eyebrows, this formidable looking little man, the nearest approach to the wax-works version of a Russian Nihilist, was the gentlest soul on the Executive Committee. Besides Purring Cat and the Janitor, Makar found in the room Andrey, an extremely tall man with Tartarian features.
The Janitor greeted Makar with a volley of oaths, stuttering as he spoke, as was usually the case when he was angry.
“You have no business to be here,” he fulminated. “You are just the man to bring a spy in tow. I shouldn’t be a bit surprised if you had one at your heels now.”
“Come, don’t fume,” Makar pleaded, confusedly. “I won’t be absent-minded any more. I have taken myself in hand. Besides, my absent-mindedness is not without its redeeming feature. You see, I am the last man to be suspected of being on my guard; so the spies would never bother me.”
Andrey and Purring Cat smiled. The Janitor started to do the same, but changed his mind. Instead, he broke into a more violent fit of temper and a more painful stutter than before. His compact figure was of medium height, his face very blond, with prominent eyes and well-trimmed red beard. His military cap matched the passport of a retired army officer under which he was registered at the police station. He was supposed to be employed at some civil tribunal, and every morning, on the stroke of eleven he would leave his lodgings, a portfolio under his arm, his military cap slightly cocked—the very personification of the part he acted. The name in his passport was Polivanoff. His real name was Michailoff, and under that name he was wanted by the gendarmes in prominent connection with several attempts on the life of the Czar. He had once escaped from under arrest and on another occasion he had managed to disappear from a railroad train while it was being searched for him. He was one of the ablest and bravest men in the party. His un-Russian punctuality and indefatigable attention to detail; his practical turn of mind and the way he had of nagging his friends for their lack of these qualities, were common topics of banter among the Terrorists. He had made a special study of every lane and court in the capital by which one might “trash” one’s trail. He not only shadowed his fellow revolutionists to see if they were aware of being shadowed or whether they dressed in accordance with the type implied by their false passports, but he also made a practice of spying over the spies of the Third Section. With this end in view, he had once rented a room across the street from that office—an institution that would have given millions for his head. Here he would sit for hours at his window, scrutinising every new person who entered the building so as to be able to keep track of their movements afterward. Having thus discovered a boarding house in which lived an important officer of the secret service he had sent the Dandy to hire a room there. The desired appointment had then been obtained without difficulty.
When Makar had laid the practical part of his scheme before the three men, the Janitor fixed his prominent eyes on him and said, without stammering:
“And you are just the chap to do it, aren’t you?”
“And why not? It certainly doesn’t need much adroitness and vigilance to get arrested.”
“The devil it does not. A fellow like you would get ten men arrested before he fooled the measliest cub spy in the Third Section. Better keep your hands off.”
“Oh, well, if the escape was really a sure thing, the matter might be arranged,” Purring Cat interposed, charitably, in a low, gentle voice. “Only this is scarcely the time for it.” Whereupon Makar, feeling encouraged, launched out to describe his far-reaching scheme in detail. The look of the Janitor’s prominent eyes, however, disturbed him, so that he expounded the plan in a rather nerveless way; when he had finished, the Janitor declared:
“He’s certainly crazy.”
Purring Cat’s blue eyes looked up under their bushy brows, as he said, gravely:
“There may be something in it, though, theoretically at least. In reality, however, I am afraid that general state of chaos would rebound upon ourselves. The government may get its spies into our circles until one does not know who is who. It may become a double-edged weapon, this ‘babel of distrust.’ As to that prison scheme it might be tried some day. Only don’t be in a hurry, Makar.”
“And what is your opinion?” Makar addressed himself to Andrey solicitously.
Andrey who was a man of few words, and spoke with a slight lisp, said he had no definite opinion to offer, but, when Makar pressed him hard, he said:
“Well, we have one man there” (meaning the Third Section), “so let us not make the mistake of the woman who cut her hen open in order to get at all her eggs at once. Still, if the scheme could be worked in some of the provinces, it might be worth while. It all depends on circumstances, of course.”
Makar longed to see Sophia, the daughter of the former governor of St. Petersburg. She had taken an active part in one of the most daring rescues and was celebrated for the ingenuity and motherly devotion with which she gave herself to the “Red Cross” work of the party, supplying political prisoners with provisions and keeping them in secret communication with their relatives. It was the story of this young noblewoman’s life which afterwards inspired Turgeneff’s prose poem, The Threshold. Makar thought she might take an active interest in his scheme, but she was overwhelmed with other work and inaccessible.