‘Leave us, leave us! in the name of the Great Father, go! My brother is far away; hundreds of versts of sea divide him from his native land, and mayhap he will come back no more.’
‘It were well for him if he stayed away,’ remarked Danevitch with solemnity. ‘But why grow angry with me, my child? I have sorrow for you; I have tears for you. You have been ensnared, deluded, cheated; and he who ensnared you and cheated you stood high in the estimation of men. The penalty of his folly was his life. He has paid it. For your weakness blood lies at your door, and nothing can ever wash it away.’
At these words Catherine uttered a smothered cry, and fell into her mother’s arms, and Mrs. Blok, excited and enraged, screamed at him:
‘Out of the house, I tell you, out of the house! You lay murder to our charge, and you lie. Go away! I command you in God’s name to go.’ She crossed herself as she spoke, and with her finger drew an imaginary cross between herself and the prophet of evil, murmuring as she did so: ‘We are defenceless women; God shield us!’
The painful and dramatic scene affected Danevitch, and he silently withdrew; but he felt that he had got confirmation of his surmises, for as soon as he learnt the story of the family, he came to the conclusion in his own mind that the man who had deprived Ferguson of his life was Catherine’s unhappy brother. The young fellow, proud-spirited and honest, flamed up at his sister’s wrong, and, taking the matter in his own hands, had penned that letter to Ferguson demanding an interview. It was obvious there had been other letters written, because the writer said, ‘This is the last chance I shall give you.’ Who could have written that letter—which Danevitch so patiently pieced together from the shreds picked out of the waste-paper basket—if it had not been the broken-hearted brother? He knew Ferguson, he had been employed in the warehouse; and the great wrong his sister had suffered made him desperate—made him forget the social division which separated him from his sister’s wronger. He went to him, not with robbery in his heart—he was too proud for that—not with murder in his heart, but to demand that the false statement which had been wrung from poor Catherine should be given up to him, and that Ferguson should recognise the claims the girl and the child had upon him.
It was easy to work out the sequel. Peter went to the office; he wanted the paper his sister had signed. He probably grew angry, and threatened his employer. The employer was obstinate, stubborn, perhaps insulting, until, stung into frenzy, the unhappy youth flew at him, and, blinded by his passion, Peter had crushed the life out of the man before he knew it. Youthful strength and fury made Peter Blok a murderer, although he may have had no wish to slay his victim. Finding, to his dismay, that death had silenced for ever the lips of his sister’s betrayer, he made a frantic effort to discover the paper which he knew was in Ferguson’s possession. But his search proving fruitless, he fled with remorse, no doubt, gnawing at his heart.
Danevitch says that never throughout his career did he start to hunt down a man with greater reluctance than he did in the case of Peter Blok. With the exception of Danevitch himself, no one suspected Peter, and as it had taken him some weeks to learn what he had learnt, the young fellow had got a start which would probably save him from the law’s vengeance.
Danevitch, proceeding with great caution and tact, found out that Peter had been second in command of a river-boat engaged in bringing furs down from Astrakhan. The boat was one of the river fleet belonging to Ferguson, Tauchnitz, and Co. Three weeks before the crime in Riga, Peter obtained leave of absence in order to visit his mother, who was sick. As it was a long journey to where his mother was living, his lengthened absence did not arouse any suspicion. After the commission of the crime, there was every reason to believe he quitted Riga at once, and Danevitch satisfied himself that Peter had not gone to Valdai again. As he had already spent several days there with his mother and sister, had he returned he must have been noticed, for it was a small place, and a stranger was spotted immediately.
From what Danevitch had gathered during his interview, in the character of a gipsy, with Catherine and her mother, he inferred that Catherine, at any rate, if not Mrs. Blok, knew that Peter was going to see Ferguson. And from what Catherine said during the interview—‘My brother is far away; hundreds of versts of sea divide him from his native land, and maybe he will come back no more’—the deduction was Peter had gone to sea. Being a sailor, he would probably experience no difficulty in obtaining a ship. And it was equally feasible to suppose that before going he wrote to his sister, telling her he was going far beyond the seas.
The most diligent and careful inquiries in Riga failed to elicit any sign that Peter had sailed from that port, and it was likely enough that he had made his way to some other port on the Baltic Sea, or else to Cronstadt. Anyway, he could not be found; and as Danevitch could not entertain a doubt that Peter had killed Ferguson, he felt bound, as a matter of duty, to circulate a description of him. This description, however, was not made public, but placed in the hands of the police and their thousand and one spies. A whole year passed, however, and no trace of Peter was obtained. The crime had died out of the public memory, though not out of that of the police. They have long memories, and thus it came to pass that one day it was announced that the supposed murderer of Donald Ferguson, the merchant of Riga, had been arrested in St. Petersburg. Although he had grown a beard and whiskers, he was soon identified as Peter Blok, and a ship’s discharge upon him showed that he had come from New York to Cronstadt in an American ship.