Presently they entered a courtyard and took to climbing a steep stony staircase. Strong, inviting odours of cabbage soup and cooked meat greeted them at several of the landings. Makar’s lodging was on the sixth floor. He had moved in only a few days ago and the chief object of Pavel’s visit was to make a mental note of its location.
The first thing Makar did as he got into the room was to put a pitcher on one of his two windows. The windows commanded a little side street, and the pitcher was Makar’s safety signal. When he had lit his lamp a sofa, freshly covered with green oil-cloth, proved to be the best piece of furniture in the room, the smell of the oil-cloth mingling with the stale odours of tobacco smoke with which the very walls seemed to be saturated.
“Ugh, what a room!” Pavel said, sniffing. They talked of a revolutionist who had recently been arrested and to whom they referred as “Alexandre.” Special importance was attached by the authorities to the capture of this man, because among the things found at his lodgings was a diagram of the Winter Palace with a pencil mark on the imperial dining hall. As the prisoner was a conspicuous member of the Terrorists’ Executive Committee, the natural inference was that another bold plot was under way, one which had something to do with the Czar’s dining room, but which had apparently been frustrated by the discovery of the diagram. The palace guard was strongly re-enforced and every precaution was taken to insure the monarch’s safety. Now, the Terrorists had their man in the very heart of the enemy’s camp, and the result of the search of Alexandre’s lodgings was no secret to them. This revolutionist, whose gloomy face was out of keeping with his carefully pomaded hair, kid gloves, silk hat, showy clothes and carefully trimmed whiskers à la Alexander II., was known to Makar as “the Dandy.” Less than a year before he had obtained a position in the double capacity of spy and clerk, at the Third Section of his Majesty’s Own Office, and so liked was he by his superiors that he had soon been made private secretary to the head of the secret service, every document of importance passing through his hands. Since then he had been communicating to the Executive Committee, now a list of new suspects, now the details of a contemplated arrest, now a copy of some secret circular to the gendarme offices of the empire.
While they were thus conversing of Alexandre and the Dandy, Pavel stretched himself full length on the sofa and dozed off. When he opened his eyes, about two hours later, he found Parmet tiptoeing awkwardly up and down the room, his shadow a gigantic crab on the wall. Pavel broke into a boisterous peal of laughter.
“Here is a figure for you! All that is needed is an artist to set to work and paint it.”
“Are you awake? Look here, Pasha. Your gendarme’s sister and her aunt are haunting my mind.”
“Why, why, have you fallen in love with both of them at once?” Pavel asked as he jumped to his feet and shot his arms toward the ceiling. He looked refreshed and full of animal spirits.
“Stop joking, Pasha, pray,” Makar said in his purring, mellifluous voice. “It irritates me. It’s a serious matter I want to speak to you about, and here you are bent upon fun.” Pavel’s story of the gendarme officer’s sister had stirred in him visions of a mighty system of counter-espionage. He had a definite scheme to propose.
Pavel found it difficult to work himself out of his playful mood until Makar fell silent and took to pacing the floor resentfully. When he had desisted, with a final guffaw over Makar’s forlorn air, the medical student, warming up to fresh enthusiasm, said: