“True, I know it. But what does it matter now? This is not the old time.”
“There was a prison in Chita—or was there?”
“True, there was a prison. A big one on a hill. You shall see it in time as we come to the city. But it is empty now, and the devil may live in it for all I care.”
“I have heard that there was a Colonel Governor in Chita with one eye. He lost the other in a fight with a tiger, but he killed the tiger.”
“Poosh!” said the conductor. “That is somebody’s vodka-story. I have been on the railroad from the time it began, and I never heard of any Colonel Governor who killed a tiger, or who had one eye. The last governor at Chita was named Kolessow, and he had a bad leg, not a bad eye. He ran away when the revolution came. Before that was Kirsakoff, and I can tell you Kirsakoff had both his eyes. I never saw him—and a good thing, too, or——”
“There never was a governor here named Kirsakoff,” said Peter.
“No!” cried the conductor. “You have been in foreign lands, but you know more than I about this, do you? I say that there was a governor—Michael Alexandrovitch, and a general!”
“Perhaps I am wrong after all. Forgive me. But I had forgotten, because Kirsakoff went to Odessa.”
“Perhaps he did. I don’t know,” said the conductor. “Are you looking for him?”
“Oh, no,” said Peter. “I am looking for my brother. All I know is that my brother was in a place where a Colonel Governor with one eye lived—the fellow who had a fight with a tiger. But it was not Kirsakoff, surely.”