"No, I must get back to the hotel and relieve Sacha's mind. If I do not he will certainly set out to find me, and as he has no language but Russian, that might lead to complications."
"Who," demanded Joan, "is Sacha, pray? Have you been stylish enough to set up a valet?"
"It is Sacha who appears to have set me up. I had occasion once to do him a kindness, and he thereupon attached himself permanently to my person. There is no creature on earth so grateful as a grateful Russian."
Joan took him by the arms and made him sit down again. "Not a foot do you stir till you tell us all about it!" she proclaimed, scenting a story.
"About what? Sacha? Well!—In a village where I stopped for awhile a young mouzhik had been very badly beaten and thrown into prison to await trial, and things promised to go rather badly with him. So—"
"Wait a minute. Why had he been beaten?"
"For murder," said Nikolai calmly.
His audience gasped.
"Only the murder was not successful," he continued, "Sacha was unfortunately interrupted before he had completed the job."
"Unfortunately!"