§3
This judge of wine went with me to the Chief Commissioner’s house on the Tver Boulevard, where he took me to a side room and left me alone. Half an hour later, a fat man with a lazy, good-natured expression came in, carrying papers in a wallet; he threw the wallet on a chair and sent the policeman who was standing at the door off on some errand.
“I suppose,” he said to me, “you are mixed up in the affair of Ogaryóv and the other young men who were lately arrested.” I admitted it.
“I’ve heard about it casually,” he went on; “a queer business! I can’t understand it at all.”
“Well, I’ve been in prison a fortnight because of it, and not only do I not understand it, but I know nothing about it.”
“That’s right!” said the man, looking at me attentively. “Continue to know nothing about it! Excuse me, if I give you a piece of advice. You are young, and your blood is still hot, and you want to be talking; but it’s a mistake. Just you remember that you know nothing about it. Nothing else can save you.”
I looked at him in surprise; but his expression did not suggest anything base. He guessed my thoughts and said with a smile:
“I was a student at Moscow University myself twelve years ago.”
A clerk of some kind now came in. The fat man, who was evidently his superior, gave him some directions and then left the room, after pressing a finger to his lips with a friendly nod to me. I never met him again and don’t know now who he was; but experience proved to me that his advice was well meant.