"So these wretches will find," returned my interlocutor. "These carrion! But now, in view of this—and I have told you because of the candid manner in which you have answered my questions—is there anything you noticed in your visit yesterday to help us."
Clearly, he did not suspect me; and no records had been found yet.
"No. The place seemed alive with inmates—like a rabbit warren. Enough to have held it against a regiment. Good God, what villains!" I cried in horror. Mine was genuine feeling enough, for some of the terrible effects to myself were fast crowding into my thoughts. I recalled my encounter with my Nihilist comrade on the very threshold of the house.
"Of course, those permits will be withdrawn now, Lieutenant," said the official as he dismissed me. But his manner was much less severe and curt than at the outset. "As a matter of fact they ought never to have been granted, though I cannot explain why just now. But under the circumstances you will probably feel personally unwilling to leave Russia at such a juncture."
"I should feel myself a traitor," said I, grandiloquently; and in fact I did feel very much like one as I left him, rejoicing that I still breathed the fresh air of heaven instead of the foetid atmosphere of a gaol.
One thing was certain now—neither Olga nor I could hope to escape yet. Any attempt would be fatal. The murder of such a man would mean that the lurid search light of suspicion would fall in all directions, on the guilty and guiltless alike. The liberty certainly, and probably the life, of every suspected Nihilist in Moscow at the moment were at stake: and the slightest trip or false step on our part would amount to a direct invitation to ruin.
As I walked back sadly and thoughtfully to my rooms, I had abundant proofs of the terrible effects of the assassination. The police agents were everywhere, watching, raiding, arresting; and in my short walk I met more than one gloomy party of them, each with its one or two prisoners in their midst, hurrying on foot or in hired carriages to the police stations.
It is not my business, however, to describe here the scenes that followed the most daring, most secret, most thrilling, and save one, most terrible assassination that ever convulsed Russia. The murder of the Czar stirred the surface of the world more, because it had more of the pageantry of crime about it; but the death of the Chief of the Secret Police caused a much deeper sense of insecurity, and spread a far greater dread of the secret power of Nihilism.
Who had done it? To me it was an inscrutable mystery; unless it had been the man I had seen near the house. But what I had to consider was not whose hand had driven the dagger home, but rather what the effects would be to me and to her for whose safety I now felt more fears and concern than I had felt for myself in all my life.
One incident in the interview I had just had impressed me greatly: the reference which the official had dropped as to the power behind Tueski in dealing with me. My questioner had seemed to know about it that morning: and all this perplexed me.