Presently he found himself shadowed by a man in civilian clothes whom he knew to be a gendarme in disguise. It was evident, however, that the spy was following him merely as a suspicious person without having any idea what sort of man his quarry was, and Zachar, with whom a hunt of this kind was a daily occurrence, had no difficulty in “thrashing his trail.” He was bound for the cheese shop on Little Garden Street. This was within a short walk from the Public Library, yet on this occasion it took him an hour’s “circling” to reach the place.
About ten minutes after Zachar entered the cheesemonger’s basement, the head porter of the house met two police officers round the corner. One of them was the captain of the precinct and the other, one of his roundsmen. The Czar was expected to pass through this street in two days, so one could not be too watchful over a suspicious place like this.
“There is somebody down there now,” the head porter said to the captain, with servile eagerness. “A big fellow with a long pointed beard. I have seen him go down several times before. He looks like a business man, but before he started to go down he stopped to look round.”
This stopping to look round was, according to a printed police circular, one of the symptoms of Nihilism, so the roundsman was ordered to watch until the suspicious man should re-emerge from the cheese shop.
When the captain had gone the roundsman brushed out his icicled moustache with his finger nails, and said with an air of authority:
“Well, you take your post at the gate and I’ll just go and change my uniform for citizen’s clothes in case it’s necessary to see where that fellow is going. Keep a sharp lookout on that cursed basement until I get back, will you?”
When he returned, in citizen’s clothes, he found that the suspicious man had left the store and that the head porter had set out after him, leaving his assistant in his place.
“There is another man down there now,” the assistant porter whispered. Presently the new visitor came out of the basement. As he mounted the few steps and then crossed over, through the snow, to a sleigh standing near by, he kept mopping his face with a handkerchief, thus preventing the two spies from getting a look at his features. Seeing that he boarded a hackney-sleigh, the roundsman did the same, ordering the driver to follow along as closely as possible, but at this he lost time in persuading the hackman that he was a policeman in disguise. The two sleighs were flying through the snow as fast as their horses could run. The policeman was far in the rear. For some ten minutes his eyes were riveted to the suspicious man. Presently, however, the vehicle he was shadowing turned a corner, and by the time he reached that point it was gone. All sorts of sleighs, their bells jingling, were gliding along in every direction, but the one he wanted was not among them.
The head porter, who had started after the first man, in the absence of the roundsman, had met with a similar defeat. After awhile the hackman who had driven the second suspicious man returned to his stand. In answer to inquiry he told how his fare had twice changed his destination, finally alighted on a street corner, and turned into a narrow alley.
Meanwhile Zachar had called on My Lord. It was about seven o’clock. The two revolutionists sat chatting in a cheerful gas-lit room, when the host was called out into the corridor. As he was long in coming back, Zachar went to the door, prepared for the worst. He found the corridor full of gendarmes and police. It was evident that they had fought shy of raiding My Lord’s apartments for fear of violence, and had been patiently waiting until his visitor should come out of his own accord. Several of the gendarmes made a dash at Zachar, seizing him by both arms. One of these was the spy from whom he had “circled” away near the Public Library, soon after he had taken leave from the ex-Governor’s daughter three hours ago. Zachar’s presence here was a surprise to this gendarme, but the full importance of the man was still unknown to him. The officer in command, however, knew who his prisoner was.