By this time Ivanoff had somewhat recovered himself, and said firmly:
‘I have nothing to confess. I am innocent before God.’
‘Most criminals declare themselves innocent at first,’ answered the Judge coldly. ‘However, I have no doubt you will tell another tale before we have done with you. I charge you now with being the murderer of Mr. Riskoff, and make you my prisoner. Secure him and bring him along.’
The policemen seized the wretched man, and fastened his wrists together with a pair of handcuffs. He begged to be allowed to write two or three letters, but this request was refused, and he was taken from the house, still protesting his innocence, and without being able to take a final leave of his wife, who remained unconscious. In accordance with the mode of procedure peculiar to Russia, the suspected man was conducted to the office of the criminal prison, where he was subjected to another cross-examination, and the Judge of Instruction handed in his procès-verbal, as the French call it. The Judge, having finished his part of the affair so far, received an official receipt for his prisoner’s body and left, while the prisoner himself, having been stripped of his clothing, and a prison suit allotted to him, was consigned to a secret cell, which meant that he would be kept isolated from everyone until the police had worked up sufficient evidence to secure his conviction. But in the event of their failing to do that, the prisoner himself would in all probability ultimately confess in order to be relieved from the awful horror of solitary confinement in a secret dungeon.
The case against Ivanoff seemed perfectly clear. The public condemned him from the first, for the evidence was so strong. There was the letter which Riskoff had written declining to lend the money Ivanoff had applied to him for. Yet within thirty-six hours of that letter being received, Riskoff was discovered dead in his own house. He had that very morning drawn from his bank a large sum of money. A portion of the money was found in Ivanoff’s possession. Riskoff had been shot from behind. A bullet had entered the back part of the head, traversing the brain and producing instant death. The deed was done with a revolver, which was left in the room, no doubt by an oversight on the part of the slayer. The revolver was the property of Ivanoff, as proved by a little silver plate let into the butt, on which his name was engraved. On his own confession, Ivanoff had visited Riskoff. He knew that he was about to set out on a journey. He knew also that he would draw money from the bank for the purposes of his journey. Therefore, having been refused the loan he had asked for, he went to the house with the deliberate intention of killing his erstwhile friend and robbing him of his money.
Such was the construction put upon the case, and it seemed as if no one but an idiot could doubt for a moment that Ivanoff had committed the crime. And as a piece of strengthening evidence the words he had uttered in the café were raked up against him. ‘It’s a burning shame,’ he had said, ‘that I should be poor when there are thousands less worthy than I am rolling in wealth. I feel as if I could do murder on those who hoard their gold when so many are suffering for the want of common necessaries.’
All these things taken into consideration left no room to doubt that Ivanoff was a murderer. He had committed a clumsy crime, and left such tracks behind him that in a very short time the outraged law had him in its grip.
The tragedy aroused more than the usual amount of interest, as both Ivanoff and Riskoff were well known, while the prisoner’s story was not without a certain romance which added to the interest. His poetical tendencies; his essays in art; his struggles; his wooing of the beautiful Maria in opposition to the sage counsels and earnest advice of his school-fellow and friend, Riskoff; his marriage; his monetary difficulties; his appeal for help to the man whose advice he had scouted—all these things afforded the general public subject-matter for discussion; they were so many chapters in an exciting tale, the end of which was murder.
As may be imagined, Mrs. Ivanoff’s friends were furious, for, though poor, they were as proud as Lucifer, and felt strongly embittered against the man who had brought such disgrace into the family. Poor Maria came in for a fair amount of blame. She was told very bluntly that she had no business ever to have married such a man. These reproaches made her dreadful position still harder to bear; but when the first shock of the disclosure and the arrest had passed, she rose equal to the occasion, and startled everyone she knew by declaring her unalterable belief in her husband’s innocence. This seemed to most people like flying in the very face of Providence. The accused man’s guilt was so obvious that it was an outrage on intelligence to argue otherwise. But Maria Ivanoff was a young and newly-married woman. She had married for love. Her husband had always treated her with the greatest tenderness and consideration. Over and over again he had told her he worshipped the very ground she walked upon, and had done everything in his power to prove that he did not speak mere words. She believed in him; she believed in his assertion that he was innocent; and though all the world condemned him she would not. She was his wife, his loving wife, and she would try to save him. The poor woman saw clearly enough that she stood alone, and that she could expect neither sympathy nor help from anyone. Nevertheless, she was not daunted, nor was she deterred, and her first step was to seek an interview with the Minister of the Interior, or, as we should call him, the Home Secretary. It was not easy to obtain this interview, but thanks to the influence of a gentleman holding a high official position, with whom she was acquainted, she succeeded at last, and found herself face to face with the proud and pompous personage who was invested with such tremendous power that he could snatch a person from his doom even at the eleventh hour. To the Minister she pleaded, literally on her knees, for an order to visit her husband. At first the official was obdurate; but her tears, her eloquence, her distress, and perhaps, more than all, her beauty, softened him; and she left his bureau with a Government order which granted her a twenty minutes’ interview with the prisoner. She flew to the gloomy prison, presented the order, and in a little while, in the presence of numerous officials, husband and wife met again; but it was in a dismal corridor, and they were separated from each other by an iron grill.
Although only little more than a week had elapsed since that cruel night when he was torn from her side, a wonderful change had taken place in him. He looked ten years older. He was haggard and ghastly, and no wonder, for he had suddenly changed the sunshine and brightness of the world for a pestiferous dungeon, far below the ground, where every movement of the prisoner was watched, where the walls were lined with felt to deaden all sound; where miasma rose up from the ground, and ooze and slime dropped from the roof; where no human voice was heard, for the stern warders were prohibited from opening their lips to a prisoner; where the food was horrible, and even the common decencies of life were not observed. No wonder that in such a place men went mad; no wonder that even in a few weeks youth and vigour were changed to tottering age.