"But depression followed quickly on the heels of exultation. The firing of the bomb, though it stopped the train and caused the Russian spies to be arrested, would hardly help me to declare my presence in the coffin. The chance was that I should be left there till I starved, or else put hastily underground because no one knew who I was. What was I to do to arrest the attention of the officials, who were even now beginning to search the train from end to end.
"I thought hard, as though my brain were packed in ice, and then the inspiration came to me.
"'I have it! The cigars! If they see smoke coming through the air-holes, they'll think it was the bomb!'
"Did you ever try to smoke a cigar when you had just come round after having been under chloroform? If not, then you may take my word for it that it needs more heroism than to charge a battery or defend a barricade. I choked and coughed. I was seized by the most hideous nausea. I would have preferred the torture of the rack or thumbscrew. But I bit my lips and stuck to it, smoking for dear life's sake.
"It seemed whole weeks before my signal was discovered, though from the length of the ash upon my Vevey fine I knew that it could not have been more than five minutes at the outside. At last I began to hear voices, though I failed to distinguish the words, and realised that tools were at work upon my living tomb. In spite of the awful nausea, I puffed away harder than ever, pressing upwards with my hand, so as to lift the lid the very moment it was loosened.
"At last it yielded. I thrust it off, not waiting for it to be lifted, and with the stump of my cigar still between my fingers sprang to my feet, exclaiming—
"'It is time that I was out of this. I have no business here.'
"The guards and porters and policemen who were standing round turned pale, as though they had seen a ghost, and nearly fell into each other's arms.
"'Who the——' one of them ejaculated in his consternation, and I answered reassuringly—
"'Fear nothing! No harm will happen to you. I am Jean Antoine Stromboli Kosnapulski.'