Peter was now sure that Fate had a hand in everything which had brought him back to the place of his boyhood. The whole thing had come about with an inevitableness which revealed a divinely directed plan. If some force had shaped events for him with such unerring accuracy, he saw no reason why the final result should not be brought about with the same ease with which he had come thus far on the way to his revenge.
He had a feeling that the task he had set himself was now accomplished—the finding of Kirsakoff. His mind was at rest, and he felt the need of relaxation from the strain of wavering hopes and doubts. Also, he suddenly felt hungry with that voracious appetite which comes to people who pass the crisis of a severe illness and know without reservation that they are on the way to complete recovery.
The fiddler he had heard on the floor above before going to talk with Katerin and her father, had now descended to the hotel dining room, and was playing merrily. There were other instruments, too—an orchestra. The music was a novelty for the hotel. It lifted Peter’s spirits, and dispelled the gloom of the place. For the first time since he had arrived in Chita Peter wished to move about among other people.
He washed at the little sink, and combed his hair. Then he went down the hall to the dining room. There were but a few people in the place—young men in Cossack uniform, with flashily dressed women, sitting by twos at the little tables along the wall under the frosty windows. The gloominess of the room was apparent even under the lights and the music, but it was the merriest scene Peter had seen in the city.
There were four musicians on a raised platform at the far end of the room close to the red-painted buffet-bar with the smashed mirrors. And the quartet was clad in poor and ill-fitting gray suits—the men were German prisoners of war.
Peter clicked his heels in the doorway and bowed before he entered. The officers at the table looked up with startled eyes, but inclined their heads slightly in response to the courtesy. But it was plain that his American uniform had attracted special attention, for the women companions of the Cossacks stared at him. Peter wondered if there was any resentment because he wore his belt and pistol, though he could not understand how he had committed any breach of etiquette by being armed, for the young Cossacks were all wearing their pistols and their sabers.
The musicians played a German air, sadly, and with good evidence that some of the strings were missing. There were two violins, a ’cello, and a clarinet.
A waiter came to Peter. The man was clad in the same bluish-gray as the musicians. He also was a war prisoner, and clicked his heels and was quite military in his manner.
“Have you a ticket, sir?” he asked, speaking in English.
“Is a ticket necessary?” asked Peter in surprise. “I am staying at the hotel.”