I had not risked looking for either Helga or Siegel; but when I had passed through I hung about and soon made a discovery which filled me with concern.
A great distinction was made between the men and the women. Scarcely any difficulty was made in regard to the men; some sharp glances and a few questions at the most. But all the women between twenty and fifty years of age were taken away for separate examination.
I saw Helga come up, hand over her passport, and submit to the close and searching scrutiny with a kind of impatient frankness that was admirable acting. But she was led away like the rest for further examination of her papers.
I was waiting with an anxiety which can be imagined for her to appear again, when I was witness of the little comedy in which Siegel played the chief part.
He had put up his coat collar and drawn down his cap so that as little of his face as possible was to be seen, and he came striding along casting quick suspicious glances on all sides, much after the manner of the conventional conspirator of burlesque.
In this way he tried to thrust his way past the officials. Any one with the faintest sense of humour would have seen he was fooling; but humour is not the strong point of Russian officialism. The men by the barrier whispered together as he approached and then clustered close like wasps round an over ripe peach.
“Your passport, monsieur, if you please,” said one, stopping him.
“Passport, what do you mean?” he asked in a truly cosmopolitan language.
“Your passport; you know what that is,” said the man trying French.
“Haven’t one,” he answered. He told me afterwards he had intentionally torn up mine, thinking he had better leave the officials to connect him with me. “Americans don’t want passports.”