“Go!” said the Jew. “You shall not till I am dead! We can all die together, mistress. Let the Ataman come, I say, and may he die with ten thousand devils dancing before his eyes!”
“Truth! Let him come,” said Michael. “You are here, Wassili, now stay with us. Let Zorogoff come, and by the Holy Saints he or I shall be carried out of the place on a board!”
“And perhaps the American will be glad to meet the Ataman, eh?” said Slipitsky. “We may as well bring him to the test, now that the Ataman knows where you are. We are riding a tiger, and we may as well pull his ears!”
XVI
KATERIN’S STRATAGEM
PETER found himself enmeshed in a maze of conjecture about Vashka. He knew that she was not a samovar girl, yet it was quite possible that she had been compelled to become one for her own safety. But whatever her purpose might be, it was apparent to him that she had expected to find in him a messenger—and that the expected messenger would be an American officer.
As Peter studied the matter, he saw that she would not know the expected messenger by sight, but would have to submit him to some test. It was plain enough that she had been greatly disappointed in Peter, for he had seen in her face signs of actual terror when she realized that she had blundered with him.
It was the possibility that some other American officer was expected in the city which worried Peter. Such an event might well interfere with his plans for killing Kirsakoff. Peter did not want it known to the American army that he had stopped in Chita—at least, only casually. He did not want his presence in the city, nor the time, established too well. He hoped to flit away to Irkutsk and report himself there without any mention of having been in Chita. Then he could come back, report himself in Chita and go on to some other city. In this way he wanted to establish the fact that he had been in Chita, but make it appear that his time in the city had been after Kirsakoff had been killed rather than during the period of the former Governor’s death.
But it might take Peter a week or more to find Kirsakoff, and then it would take time to work out the details of the affair in such a way that there would not be the slightest indication that the American officer who had been staying at the hotel had had anything to do with it. But another American officer in the city would complicate the business. The newcomer would expect to keep in close touch with Peter, and would probably expect to share his room—and the stranger might have a Russian-speaking orderly with him. And that would mean that Peter’s facility with the language would be discovered, his request to be sent over into Trans-Baikailia would become significant, the leaving of the orderly at Nikolsk would build up a chain of circumstantial evidence. All that might be awkward for Peter if some slight trifle connected Peter with the killing of Kirsakoff.
Peter wondered if he would see Vashka again. It seemed a remote possibility that she would return. Why should she? She knew now that he was not a messenger, and to visit Peter again could do her no good and might reveal to him the line on which she was working. There was a slight chance that she might be in the American service, but he dismissed that thought, for she had given him no sign that she was a member of the military secret service. His mind being occupied along a certain channel, he had no basis on which to begin to analyze the aims of Vashka. The key to the solution of the problem, for him, was old Rimsky. But that Rimsky was in any way concerned with the visit from Vashka, was as remote from Peter’s mind as would be a suggestion that the samovar girl was the little daughter of Kirsakoff. That little girl still lived in Peter’s memory as a child sitting in a sledge the morning Peter’s father had been killed. His mind held that picture—held it without change. It was a picture which did not take cognizance of the passage of years, a butterfly caught in amber, say, through the ages.