"Take out the gag!" repeated Petrokine; and the handkerchief was removed.
"Now, Paul Ivanovitch," said he, "what have you to say before you go?"
"Not a dismissal, sirs," he pleaded; "not a dismissal: anything but that! I will go into some distant land, and my mouth shall be closed for ever. I will do anything that the society asks; but pray, pray do not dismiss me."
"You know our laws, and you know your crime," said Alexis, in a cold, harsh voice. "Who drove us from Odessa by his false tongue and his double face? Who wrote the anonymous letter to the Governor? Who cut the wire that would have destroyed the arch-tyrant? You did, Paul Ivanovitch; and you must die."
I leaned back in my chair and fairly gasped.
"Remove him!" said Petrokine; and the man of the droschky, with two others, forced him out.
I heard the footsteps pass down the passage, and then a door open and shut. Then came a sound as of a struggle, ended by a heavy, crunching blow and a dull thud.
"So perish all who are false to their oath," said Alexis solemnly; and a hoarse "Amen" went up from his companions.
"Death alone can dismiss us from our order," said another man further down; "but Mr. Berg—Mr. Robinson is pale. The scene has been too much for him after his long journey from England."
"Oh, Tom, Tom," thought I, "if ever you get out of this scrape you'll turn over a new leaf. You're not fit to die, and that's a fact." It was only too evident to me now that by some strange misconception I had got in among a gang of cold-blooded Nihilists, who mistook me for one of their order. I felt, after what I had witnessed, that my only chance of life was to try to play the rôle thus forced upon me until an opportunity for escape should present itself; so I tried hard to regain my air of self-possession, which had been so rudely shaken.