The Samovar Girl

by Frederick Ferdinand Moore

OLD Rimsky had a wise head. Many people were afraid of him and said that he talked with witches and had charms against evil—and he did sell charms against sickness, bad luck and poor crops. Besides, he had the reputation of knowing many things before they happened. But he was merely a wise old owl with the keen perception of human motives which is sometimes given to the unlettered man, though he could read well enough to get the meanings out of newspapers if there were not too many words in the articles invented by aristocrats to fool the poor people.

He spent the remainder of the day thinking about the Russian in the American coat who paid double for cigarettes and took a profit in getting answers to questions. He had watched Peter closely, and turned the whole matter over mentally, sitting by his fire and drinking tea.

Rimsky decided that he had not been clever enough with the stranger. It was plain enough now that the stranger had come to learn something about Michael Alexandrovitch Kirsakoff who had been Governor. And the stranger did not know where Michael was to be found. In some way the business could be turned to profit and over many glasses of smoky tea Rimsky evolved a plan by which he could put money in his purse.

There was an old pig-killing moujik named Ilya Andreitch who slept in the basement of a bakery on a street up near the bazaar. Ilya had worked for Kirsakoff years before, and should know where the general lived if anybody did. As for that, Rimsky now remembered that Ilya had once boasted that he knew where Kirsakoff lived since the troubles came and all the rich people were in hiding.

But there might be little in the boast, for Ilya was an old fool who was always pretending to know things. But for all his outward stupidity, Ilya was a sly rascal. His father had been sent into exile for taking money from revolutionists in Moscow by pretending to have knowledge of what the secret police were going to do—who was going to be arrested, and so on.

It happened that Rimsky had Ilya pretty much under the thumb, as the saying is. For Ilya had once fed the pigs of a watch-fixer in the city, and had stolen from his employer a whole handful of silver holy medals. Rimsky had bought them from Ilya for a tenth of their value. Out of appreciation for buying them, Ilya had spent all the money he got on vodka with Rimsky. The vodka had been stolen by a waiter in a restaurant owned by a Greek, and at half price sold it to Ilya, which was quite all right, for everybody stole from foreigners if they could. The thing for the foreigners to do is to stay at home and not go about selling food and drink at prices too high.

Rimsky knew that he might be able to induce Ilya to tell where Kirsakoff was living. That might mean double money for Rimsky. Kirsakoff would no doubt pay well to know that an American was seeking him, and the American would probably pay well to know where Kirsakoff might be found. It was only a matter of handling them properly.

And by delaying the information sought by both Kirsakoff and the man who called himself an American, a pretty penny might be realized. It was by such smart methods, Rimsky felt sure, that rich folks got rich. And by getting rich, they made poor folks poorer. Being rich was all simple enough, for there was only so much money in the world, and the trick was to get a lot of it by being smarter than other folks. There being many fools, the problem was easy enough. Rimsky knew that the Jews got rich by being able to figure interest on money, and by selling only when people wanted to buy and buying only when people wanted to sell.

So he contrived a plan by which Ilya was to supply the information for little or nothing, and Rimsky was to sell it for a bundle of rubles. It would not do to tell Ilya what was wanted. It would be best to loosen his tongue with vodka, and then accuse him of having lied when he had said he knew where Kirsakoff was living. That method would get Ilya to boasting and he would pop it all out. It could all be passed off as drinking talk, and if Ilya insisted on keeping his secret, it would be easy enough to turn the talk to holy medals. That would make Ilya see the honey pot, as the saying is; then he would get Ilya so drunk that he would forget all that had been said.

So when the lights began to appear in the shops across the Sofistkaya, Rimsky put up his own shutters over the window and wandered toward the bazaar to look in at the bakery where Ilya might be found.