My assistant had not come to live with the Princess without making some preparations for the part she was to play, and these included the bringing with her of a bunch of skeleton keys, fully equal to the work of opening any ordinary lock.
As soon as her mistress was safely out of the way, Fauchette came to receive my instructions.
I told her that I did not intend to wait for my jailer’s return. We discussed the best way for me to slip out, without obstruction from the servants, and I decided to take advantage of the superstition of the Russian illiterate class, by enacting the part of my own ghost.
The report that I had been buried without any funeral service had already reached the household, and had prepared them for any supernatural manifestation.
Fauchette first brought me a little powdered chalk, with which I smeared my face. I then put on a long flowing cloak and a sombrero hat, part of the wardrobe accumulated by the Princess in the course of her gaieties.
I slipped a damp sponge into my pocket and directed the girl to lead the way.
She went down-stairs a few yards in front of me, turned into the servants’ part of the house and threw open the back door, which led out into a courtyard giving on a street used only by tradesmen’s carts. At this hour of the day it was deserted.
I followed cautiously in Fauchette’s wake, and got as far as the back door without meeting any interruption.
But at that point, the porter, who must have been roused by an unfamiliar step—though I understand he swore afterward that the passage of the ghost had been absolutely noiseless—came out and stood in the doorway.
Without hesitating for an instant I assumed an erect posture and advanced swiftly toward him with my whitened face well displayed.