“Toosh!” exploded Slipitsky. “Zorogoff is not to find you. I have known persecution in my day—who of my people have not? And in your time you were good to some of my friends. Ah, I never forget, my friend! I will hide you well. But if Zorogoff knows, then we are all dead together—as dead as the prophets! That Ataman is a robber, Excellence! Every week I must pay him money till I am beggared. Taxes, he calls it! Is the last kopeck from a poor man taxes, I ask? And every name that goes in the book he watches, for fear I would have a stranger under my roof who might be a spy against him! And that dog of a Dazo is his eyes. But we must fool Dazo, as you shall see.”
“He will know if we do not go away again,” said Katerin. “How are we to fool him on that?”
“Toosh! Who is to suspect that the two peasants who came this morning to pay me money were his Excellence the General and his daughter? It is how you get out again, as Dazo sees it, that gives me troubles. But I shall put you in rooms and no names in the book for the spies. So we must fool that stupid one below. Wait here for me, Excellence.”
The Jew unbolted the door with cautious fingers and looked down the hall. Then he went out and closed the door after him to look down the stairs. He saw Dazo lying on the bench, his back to the stove, apparently napping.
“Dazo!” yelled Slipitsky frantically, at the same time beginning a wild caper like a dance, “Dazo! Stop the two—the old man and the woman with the cabbages! Stop them I say, or I am ruined for twenty rubles! Oh, oh, oh!”
Dazo rolled off the bench and sat up, staring about him in bewilderment, startled out of a sound doze by the screams of Slipitsky.
“What is the trouble?” called the youth. “What has happened now?”
“Enough has happened!” cried Slipitsky. “The two peasants who came in with the cabbages to pay me money! Stop them! Oh, I am ruined!”
“But I saw no one!” cried Dazo. “I tell you no one has come in or gone out from this place while——”
“Stop the talk and run!” screamed Slipitsky, wringing his hands in agony. “I signed the receipt but the rubles they gave me were bad! Twenty rubles, I say, I lose! They just went out the door while you were dreaming of the wife you beat in Irkutsk! They just went out the door! Run for them and drag them back by their hair! Run, run—hurry!”