"Then I decide for the two days here. And if it will make you more comfortable, I can assure you I am quite as able to take care of myself with either sword or pistol as this bully you speak of. But it is for you to decide."
There came a pause, at the end of which she said, her face wearing a more frightened look:—
"No, it must not be. There are other reasons. My brother is mixed up with..."
"Excuse me, can you tell me which is the train for Smolensk?" asked a man who came up and interrupted us, speaking in a mixture of Russian, English and German.
The girl started violently, and I guessed the man was her brother. A glance at his eyes confirmed this. They were a weak rendering of the glorious blue eyes that had been inspiring me to all sorts of impulses for the last hour.
"That disguise is too palpable," I said, quietly. He had shaved and was wearing false hair that could deceive no one. In a few minutes the whole situation was explained to him by his quick sister.
"I've only consented to go in order that Olga here may not be robbed of her only protector," he said, thinking apparently to explain away his cowardice. "She has no one in the world to look after her but me, you know. If you'll help her in this matter, she will be very much obliged; and so shall I. You needn't go out to-morrow and fight Devinsky—that's the major's name: Loris Devinsky. My regiment's the Moscow Infantry Regiment, you know. If you'll go to my rooms and sham ill, no one will know you, and as soon as I'm over the frontier I'll wire Olga, and you can get away." He was cunning enough as well as a coward, evidently.
"Very well," said I. "But you'll get over no frontier if you wear a beard which everyone with eyes can see is false, and talk in a language that no one ever spoke on this earth. Pull off the beard: the little black moustache may stay. Speak English, or your own tongue, and play my part to the frontier; and here take my passport; but post it back to your sister to be given to me as soon as you're safe over. And for Heaven's sake don't walk as if you were a thief looking out for arrest. No one suspects; so carry yourself as if no one had cause to."
It was a good thing for him I had seen his sister first. He would never have got me to personate him even for a couple of hours.
But we got him off all right, and his sister was so pleased that I could not help feeling pleased also. First in his assumed character he made such arrangements for my luggage as I wished, and then we hurried up to the train just before it started. As we reached the barrier where the papers had to be examined, he turned and bade his sister good-bye, and then said to me aloud in Russian, hiding his voice a little:—