“If I could take my father with me,” said Katerin, “yes, I would be glad to escape the dangers here.”
“If your father will tell me where Kirsakoff may be found—I shall take you both away.”
“Oh, then we shall find Kirsakoff!” she said with a sudden return of her gay manner. “Please! I am your prisoner here! Allow me to return to my father!”
Peter unlocked the door, and she smiled over her shoulder at him as she ran down the hall.
XVII
SETTING THE SNARE
KATERIN returned to her father. She found him sitting by the table playing a game of solitaire, and he looked up from the patterns of the cards with blinking, questioning eyes. She did not speak at once, but her face was eloquent of the surprise and shock she had suffered in her talk with Peter. She was coldly calm, as if she knew now something of what was before them, and was ready to meet the issue. A plan had already formed in her mind, but it was not yet clearly defined and she wanted time to think and prepare for whatever was necessary.
“What have you learned?” whispered Michael, leaning toward her from his chair. “I can see that you know much—and I doubt that it is good. Do you know why this man has come?”
“Yes, I know,” she said, and sat down beside him and drew herself a glass of tea. Her hands shook for all her resolution not to betray to her father the fact that once more they were blocked in their hopes of escape.
Michael waited till she had refreshed herself, and Wassili, who had been making Michael’s bed and pottering about the room in pretended busyness, came and stood close to Katerin with anxious face, keen to hear what the mistress would have to report of her visit to the room of the American.