“We should not delay, I think. Is it not likely that the Ataman will be down upon the hotel at any time?”
She shivered slightly. “Every minute is precious.”
“The sooner away, the sooner we shall come up to Kirsakoff,” he said, and rose to take a turn about the room. Then he came and stood over her, looking down into her face.
“Take some more tea,” she said. “If we are to go away, you must feel as well as possible.”
“True, I must. Suppose you bring your father here—and the three of us talk over the plan of going—to Harbin.”
Katerin gave him a quick glance. Once more she had caught in Peter’s manner a glimmer of the fact that he was holding himself in leash against an impulse to action which he found it painfully difficult to restrain. He frightened her a little, for there was that about his mouth, about his eyes, and in his voice which told her that this man was ready to slay.
“My father is still asleep, I am afraid,” she said. “But I know all the plans that have been made. We are to leave by droshky—and Slipitsky will forge passports for us. The old Jew is very shrewd about such things. He helped many a man escape from—the old prison.”
Peter wondered if her reluctance to let him see her father could be due to a suspicion that Peter already knew that her father was Kirsakoff.
“Droshky to Harbin! It sounds impossible! By droshky more than a thousand versts in this time of the year?”
She laughed lightly. “Not all the way, of course,” she said. “Just far enough to get away from the city—down the railway far enough to get a train beyond where Zorogoff’s men are on guard.”