“No,” said Peter. “It was God’s hand that set me free. Some convicts escaped one night, and were recaptured by the cordons in the taiga. But before the soldiers took them, they had waylaid a sledge carrying an American fur-buyer to Irkutsk. His name was Gordon. The convicts robbed him. When Gordon got back here to Chita, he was taken to the prison and the convicts were brought out to be identified by him as the robbers. It happened that one of these men, named Grassi, had been put in the cell with me. When he was taken out into the prison yard, I was taken with him. Then it was discovered that I was the son of my father, and that there was no charge against me. Mr. Gordon, the American, asked to take me as his servant. I was released, the prison commandant corrected the records, and Mr. Gordon took me with him to America.”
Peter paused, and looked at Michael, to see what effect the story had had on the old man. But Michael’s head was nodding gently, and he seemed to be turning the matter over in his mind, his lips moving as if he were shaping words which he did not speak aloud.
Katerin stood up suddenly, and tested the fire in the samovar. She seemed agitated, and Peter assumed that she suffered with indignation at hearing his sufferings at the hands of the Governor. Then she turned to him swiftly.
“What will you do—when you find the old—Kirsakoff?” she demanded.
“I shall kill him,” said Peter simply, and was aware of a quivering hand upon the back of his chair. He turned and looked at Wassili. The moujik’s eyes were shining like a cat’s before a fire, and there was the look of murder in his face.
“Kill him!” cried Michael. “But he did not kill your father!”
Peter was startled for an instant by the old man’s horror, and Katerin’s face revealed the fact that she had never dreamed that the American officer was bent on murder—she seemed actually to be in terror of him. Peter suffered a moment of abashment, and gulped down what was left of the tea in his glass. He understood that these people did not yet fully appreciate how wantonly his father had been killed, nor how little provocation there was for the killing. He was determined to convince them of the justice of his designs.
“My father and I,” he began anew, “lived in a little hut down the Sofistkaya—it is there yet—I can see it from the windows of my room. An old man lives in it now, a queer old patriarch, who sells cigarettes——”
“That is Rimsky!” exclaimed Wassili to Katerin. She nodded, and looked at him so that she checked him.
“Yes, Rimsky,” said Peter. “That is his name. That is where I lived with my father, and where he taught me the almanacs. We were happy, for we had a samovar, and the ladies of the Street of the Dames came to us often. They gave me cakes, and my father money. Of course, I know now that he was an underground to the prison—he carried messages back and forth between wives and their husbands in the prison.”