On the Friday afternoon immediately preceding the arrest of Jeliaboff (Zachar) the porter of the house where he and Sophia were registered as brother and sister met them at the gate as they were leaving the house together; and later, at 9 o’clock in the evening, he saw Sophia return alone. The next morning, after Jeliaboff had spent his first night in prison, the police, in their effort to discover his residence, ordered every porter in the city to ascertain who of his tenants had been absent from home that night. When the porter rang Sophia’s bell that morning there was no response. He reported it at the police station where he was told to try again. At 2 o’clock he saw Sophia.
“I have received some blanks from the police,” he said. “Every tenant must state his occupation and place of business.”
“My brother is working now,” Sophia answered. “When he comes home I’ll tell him about it.”
Two hours later she went out again, and in order to avoid passing the porter at the gate, she gained the street through a little dry goods shop that had a rear door into that yard, buying something for a pretext. She came back, by way of the same dry goods shop, at 9 o’clock in the evening and that was the last that was ever seen of her in that neighbourhood. The next morning the porter reported the disappearance of the couple.
When the police searched the deserted apartment they found a number of revolutionary publications, several tin boxes like those which formed the shells of the two exploding machines seized at the “conspiracy house” kept by Hessia and the “gay poet,” and several cheeses bearing the same trade-mark as those in Koboseff’s shop.
Meanwhile Jeliaboff had heard the solemn tolling of the bells in his prison cell. In the excitement of the hour a gendarme on duty in the prison corridor answered his questions through the peep-hole, in violation of regulations. Jeliaboff at once sent word to the procureur, assuming responsibility for the entire plot, as an agent of the Executive Committee.
Sophia knew through a certain high official all that transpired between Jeliaboff and the procureur. She knew that the authorities were turning the capital inside out in their search for the woman who had lived with Jeliaboff as his sister and for the Koboseff couple, yet in spite of all the pressure the Nihilists brought to bear on her, persuading her to seek temporary retirement, she, like Urie and Baska, remained in the heart of St. Petersburg, in the very thick of her party’s activity. Clara saw her at a meeting during that week.
“You need rest, Sonia. You look tired.”
“Do I?” Sophia answered with a smile. “So do you. Everybody does these days.”
Her smile was on her lips only. Her blue eyes were inscrutably grave, but Clara saw a blend of lofty exaltation and corroding anguish in them. She knew how dear Jeliaboff was to her. She had been craving to speak to her of him, of Hessia and of the “gay poet,” who had committed suicide at the time of Hessia’s arrest; but at this moment it was Sophia herself who filled her mind.