“Hold your jaw!” ordered Klodt in a whisper.
At the same moment the rattling noise of a telega was heard somewhere in the distance. Then the two strangers raised their glasses, clicked them together, and drained the contents.
“But answer me. What is the meaning of it all?” repeated Romashov in the same anxious tone.
“My little greenhorn,” replied Klodt in a significant whisper, “if you must know, it’s only our usual little morning repast; but now I hear the telega, Ensign,” Klodt went on to say as he turned to Solotuchin. “It’s time then to finish our drink and be off. What do you think of the moonlight? Will it suit?”
“My glass is empty already,” replied Solotuchin, glancing out of the window at the moon’s slender, pointed sickle that stood drowsy and sleepy in the sky, and hung down over the little slumbering town. “But let’s just wait a wee bit. S-sh! I thought I heard a dog barking.”
And again they bent towards one another to resume their mysterious conversation, carried on in a low voice; the spluttering tone and evident lack of coherence witnessed clearly enough that the schnapps had begun to take effect. From the salle-à-manger hard by came now and then the melancholy, hollow tones of Viätkin’s and Osadchi’s improvised Mass for the Dead, which had a weird and threatening ring about it in the silent night.
Romashov seized his head with both hands.
“I beseech you, gentlemen, to stop this. I can’t stand it any longer.”
“Go to the devil!” roared Solotuchin. “No, stop, dear boy—whither away? But, by all that’s unholy, you shall first drink a glass with two fine fellows. Catch tight hold of him, Captain, I’ll shut the door.”
With a yell of laughter the two scoundrels jumped up to seize Romashov; but the latter’s self-command was exhausted. The whole hideous situation—this disgusting drinking-bout in the weird, dark room with its insufferable, stifling atmosphere—this mysterious midnight meeting between two individuals who were a danger to society—the vulgar bellowing of the drunken officers and their blasphemous parody of the Russian Mass—all this filled him with frantic terror and nausea. With a piercing shriek, he thrust Solotuchin from him, and, trembling in every limb, rushed deliberately from the mortuary.