The Samovar Girl

by Frederick Ferdinand Moore

Everybody seemed on holiday but the Chinese. They trotted about with burdens on their backs, working like ants, apparently unaware that freedom had come to Russia and that no one need work. Military motors were shooting about in all directions, dilapidated trolley cars packed with humanity creaked over bad rails, droshkies careened crazily among the burden-bearing Chinese coolies.

The car carrying Gordon rolled into the Svetlanskaya, the main street of Vladivostok, and began to climb one of the many hills. There was a great stream of confused traffic, and mixed in it were strange men in uniforms—black Annamites in French blue, yellow Japanese in buff, bronzed Czechs in brown, Cossacks in natural gray; Canadians in brown short coats, and Americans in snuff-colored khaki. On them all were the musty odors and the ancient dust of Asia.

The city was a place of swarming tangles of people—beggars and princes, vagabonds and viceroys, generals and stragglers, friends and enemies, conquerors and conquered, all whirling about in mad antics and hurrying as if they expected the end of the world to come with sundown. Refugees from the interior carrying their few poor possessions in old blankets mingled with nobles of the old régime who still tried to keep up a semblance of importance; poor women in rags with frightened red eyes and crying children clustered about them stood on the curbs and stared at foreign-looking ladies lolling in carriages and clad in suspicious grandeur. The human parasites had gathered from all the ports of the Orient to this land where people were starving in the streets. Adventurers seeking command and harpies hoping to get their fingers into stolen jewels, pushed aside blind beggars to get into the cafés.

The crisp cold air of winter was seething with joy. There were flags everywhere. The restaurants were crowded with people who lacked lodgings, gabbling, whispering, gaming. But there was something sinister lurking in the background of the mad show, glimpsed now and then in a squad of soldiers with bayonets fixed to their rifles and marching from some mysterious place to some other mysterious place with an attitude of deadly earnestness. The temper of the people was fickle. They were ready to rally to any leader who presented some dramatic ideal, or to submit to any ruler who was strong enough to subdue them by force of arms. But just now they were occupied with having a grand celebration and believed that life from now on would be nothing but a carnival.

The car carrying Gordon and the other officers arrived at the big building overlooking the bay where flew the flag of the United States—American Staff Headquarters. Gordon found the Chief of Intelligence in a large room filled with map-makers, translators, clerks, officers, busy orderlies. But Gordon did not approach the desk of his chief at once. The grave-faced colonel with spectacles was busy just then, and Gordon lingered among the office workers. There was a great buzzing of conversation and a mighty clacking of typewriters.

Gordon was keenly interested in everything. The walls were covered with maps of the Russian empire stuck full of tacks with colored heads—the fever spots of a sick nation, showing where the disease was most rampant and dangerous. And Gordon listened to the talk of the Russians, who discussed the Americans frankly, knowing that they were not understood by the strangers.

In time Gordon presented himself at the colonel’s desk, saluted, gave his name, and turned over certain papers. The colonel looked him over casually, not especially interested that another Intelligence officer had been added to his staff by Washington.

“You’ll want to look about the city, Mr. Gordon, after your month in a transport. You’ll be quartered in this building. Report to me again in the morning,” said the colonel.

So Lieutenant Gordon spent the afternoon in the teeming cafés along the Svetlanskaya. He mingled with the various factions scattered through the city—monarchists, anarchists, nihilists out of a job, German secret agents, and the adherents of new men and new parties intriguing for power with the next throw of the national dice. It was all a great orgy of talking and whispering and singing. Gordon could make neither head nor tail of it. But he watched the throngs closely. Every man got a scrutiny from the American lieutenant. An observer might think that Gordon was looking for some particular person in all that motley throng.

At the officers’ mess that evening Gordon overheard a conversation in which the necessity of sending an Intelligence officer to Irkutsk was discussed. And Gordon was on the alert at once. He said nothing, but he watched the Chief of Intelligence up at the head of the table and followed him from the mess-room to his desk upstairs.