“Mirkovitch, have you heard from Volenski?” asked a dozen eager voices.
“No,” he replied; “I thought the president or some of the committee would have had some message from him by now.”
There was a silence; then a sullen voice said—
“Swietlitzki declares that the Papal Nuncio did not go to Petersburg at all, but that he has been staying in the Tyrol for the last week.”
“But Iván said that he was starting with him on the following day, Ash-Wednesday.”
“Surely——”
“No!” interrupted the president, “no fear of that.”
“Do you mean that he may have fallen into the clutches of the police?”
“That is impossible,” said the president reassuringly, “for we should not all be sitting here peaceably. By now every one of us incriminated in those fateful papers—and most of us are so, I imagine—would have been arrested. The very fact that we are still, all of us, free men proves that our papers are safe.”
“Our papers might be,” rejoined one of the brethren, “but what about our messenger?”