THE MYSTERY OF A SHOP.
A TALL man with a reddish beard called at one of the police stations of the capital about a cheese store which he was going to open on Little Garden Street. He gave his name as Koboseff. When he had gone the Captain of the station said to one of his roundsmen:
“That fellow doesn’t talk like a tradesman. I asked him a few questions, and his answers were rather too polished for a cheese dealer.” And taking up his pen, he added, with a preoccupied air, “Keep an eye on him, will you?”
Little Garden Street was part of a route which the Emperor often took on his way to or from his niece’s residence, the Michaïl Palace, and received the special attention of the police.
The roundsman spoke to the agent of the house where Koboseff had rented a basement for his projected shop and dwelling room; whereupon the agent recalled that cheesemonger’s handwriting had struck him as being too good for a man of his class. Inquiry at the town at which Koboseff’s passport was dated brought the information that a document corresponding in every detail to the one in question had actually been issued by the local authorities. Koboseff was thus no invented name, and as the description in the passport agreed with the appearance of the man who had rented the basement, the St. Petersburg police saw no ground for further suspicion.
The cheese shop was opened in the early part of January, Koboseff having moved in with a fair-complexioned woman whom he introduced as his wife. Some three or four weeks later the head porter of the house notified the police that Koboseff had boasted of the flourishing state of his business, whereas in reality his shop attracted but very scant custom. At the same time it was pointed out that there was a well-established and prosperous cheese store close by, that the basement occupied by the Koboseffs was scarcely the place one would naturally select for the purpose, and that the rent was strikingly too high for the amount of business Koboseff could expect to do there. To cap the climax, there was some lively gossip among the neighbours about Mme. Koboseff, who had been seen smoking cigarettes—a habit quite unusual for a woman of the lower classes—and who often stayed out all night.
“Koboseff” was Uric Bogdanovich, Pavel’s “Godfather,” and “Mme. Koboseff” was Baska, formerly “housewife” of the dynamite shop and a year previous to that in charge of a house in the south near which Zachar and others attempted to blow up an imperial train.
The cheese shop was often visited by Zachar, Purring Cat, the reticent stalwart man with the Tartarian features, Pavel and other revolutionists. The police kept close watch on the place, but, according to all reports, no suspicious persons were ever seen to enter it. Upon the whole the Koboseffs seemed to be real tradesmen, and as the information concerning their passport was satisfactory, they were not disturbed. A slim little man named Kurilloff who had played the part of errand boy at the cheese shop had been arrested, but his detention had nothing to do with the Koboseffs, and the police of Little Garden Street had no idea of the arrest, while the officers who had made it were unaware of the prisoner’s connection with a suspicious shop.
“If I were you I’d make missus behave,” the head porter of the house once said to Koboseff, speaking of his “wife.”
“Right you are,” the cheesemonger replied. “Only my old woman is a tough customer to handle, you know. I do tell her she had better mind the house and ought to be ashamed of herself to smoke cigarettes, but she doesn’t care a rap, not she.”