“You are crazy,” muttered Dazo, but he reached for his coat to the wooden hook on the wall, not sure now that the two strangers had not evaded him while he was asleep.
“I am crazy for my twenty rubles!” raged Slipitsky, and Dazo pulled on his coat and dashed into the street.
Slipitsky ran back to his little office and let himself in.
“Come!” he commanded. “I will put you in rooms, now that I have sent that fool of a Dazo down the Sofistkaya looking for you.”
Michael and Katerin followed him down the long hall. The Jew put a big brass key into a door, and, turning the lock, thrust Michael into the room and handed him the key. “Keep quiet till I come with food, and if any one knocks do not answer. We have fooled that fox of a Dazo, and we shall fool the Ataman!”
And the old Jew put his fingers to his lips against the thanks which Michael and Katerin would have expressed, slipped out through the door and was gone, wailing through the hall about the fictitious twenty rubles which he had lost by the carelessness of Dazo, the spy.
XIII
KATERIN PLANS TO MEET THE AMERICAN
SLIPITSKY returned to the Kirsakoffs in an hour, bringing with him a small samovar, some bread, and a cold partridge. In his pocket he carried a bottle of wine for Michael.
“You will need something to warm and hearten you, Excellence, for there is not much warmth,” he said when Katerin had let him in.