CHAPTER XXIII.
AN UNFORESEEN SUGGESTION.
PAVEL’S prediction concerning Yossl came true, but the identity of the province to which the missing medical student belonged and the one in which the unknown Nihilist had been arrested escaped the notice of the secret service, and the Zorki gendarme officer contented himself with appropriating the Paris letter. Chance, however, soon solved the riddle for the authorities: a prisoner from Zorki, a drunkard charged with petty larceny, recognised Makar in the prison yard.
It was Masha who brought the news to Pavel and Clara.
“The general of gendarmes was there, the assistant procureur, my brother and the warden,” she said, describing the scene when Parmet was first addressed by his name in prison. “It was in the office. When he was brought in, my brother says his heart—my brother’s heart, I mean—began to beat fast. The assistant procureur offered him a chair.” She paused, with an appealing smile, her hand to her bosom. “My heart, too, is beating fearfully at this minute, as I picture the scene. I am too imaginative, I am afraid. Well, he pulled up a chair, the assistant procureur and said: ‘Be seated, Monsieur Parmet.’ The prisoner started a little, just a little, don’t you know, and then he smiled and began to rub his eyes, as if he had just been awakened. The general got angry and said now there was no use for him to make believe and to keep his mouth shut and the assistant procureur said very politely he might as well tell them a little more about himself and the people he knew in Miroslav, as they were well known to the gendarmes anyhow. They coaxed him and coaxed him and coaxed him until he shouted: ‘As to myself I have the honour of being a member of the Party of the Will of the People. As to those I know in Miroslav, I assure you I don’t know anybody here.’ But didn’t he tease them! 'I hoped to form some connections here,’ he said, 'but then you were foolish enough to arrest me without giving me a chance. The St. Petersburg gendarmes will laugh at you when they hear of the kind of job you have made of it.’”
Pavel roared. He thought Makar’s taunting answer would induce the local gendarme office to detain him in the hope of discovering his prospective “connections.”
“Only why should he have said he was a member of the Party of the Will of the People? That will aggravate his case,” Clara said.
“That was the dream of his life—to say that, and to say it triumphantly, to some gendarme officers. At any rate, we have no time to lose.”
That afternoon Pavel had a talk with Makar from the top of the hill overlooking the prison yard.