“See if it isn’t too heavy for a quarter of a pound.”
“It is, rather, but it’ll pass,” the other replied, weighing the package in his hand and then putting it into his pocket. Buried in the tobacco was a small quantity of dynamite.
“It’s too bad you are not feeling well.”
“Yes, my nerves are playing the devil with me. The worst of it is that I have got to keep the stuff under my pillow when I sleep. That gives me headaches.”
“I shouldn’t wonder. The evaporations of that stuff do that as a rule. But can’t you find another place for it?”
“Not for the night. They might go through my trunk then. They are apt to come in at any time. Oh, those surprise visits of theirs keep my wretched nerves on edge all the time.”
While the gendarmerie and the police knew him to be a leader among the revolutionary workmen of the capital and were hunting for him all over the city, this man, whose name was Stepan Khaltourin, had for the past few months been making his home, under the name of Batushkoff, in the same building as the Czar, in the Winter Palace, where his work as a varnisher was highly valued. He was a self-taught mechanic, unusually well-read and clear-headed. Of retiring disposition and a man of few words, with an iron will under a bashful and extremely gentle manner, he was one of the prominent figures of the Will of the People, having been driven to terrorism by the senseless persecutions which he had met at the hands of the authorities in his attempts to educate some of his fellow-workmen. He now lodged, together with other mechanics, in the basement of the Winter Palace, with only one room—the guard-room—between the ceiling over his head and the floor of the Imperial dining hall. Indeed, the frequent raids which a colonel at the head of a group of gendarmes had been making upon that basement since the seizure of “Alexandre’s” diagram were largely a matter of display and red tape. There was more jingling of spurs and flaunting of formidable looking moustaches than actual searching or watching. Nowhere was the incapacity of Russian officialdom illustrated more glaringly than it was in the very home of the Czar. The bold Terrorist for whom the police were looking high and low had found little difficulty in securing employment here, and one of the first things that had attracted his attention in the place was the prevailing state of anarchy and demoralisation he found in it. Priceless gems and relics were scattered about utterly unguarded; stealing was the common practice of the court servants, and orgies at which these regaled their friends from the outside world upon wines from the imperial cellars were a nightly occurrence. Since Alexandre’s arrest the vigilance of the court gendarmes had been greatly increased, so that no servant could enter the palace without being searched; yet Khaltourin contrived to smuggle in a small piece of dynamite every evening, thus gradually accumulating the supply that was needed for the terrible work of destruction he was preparing.
As to his position within the palace, he played his rôle so well that he was the favourite of gendarmes and servants alike, often hearing from them stories of the Nihilists and of the great plot to blow up the dining hall that was supposed to have been nipped in the bud.
“Well, how is that old gendarme of yours?” Zachar inquired. “Still teaching you manners?”
“Yes,” Khaltourin answered with a smile. “I am getting sick of his attentions, though. But there is something back of them, it appears. What do you think he’s after? Why, he has a marriageable daughter, so he has taken it into his head to make a son-in-law of me.”