“Don’t go on so with big talk,” warned Rimsky, “or I will begin to talk of the holy medals.”
“Talk and the devil take you!” cried Ilya, thumping the bottle down on the table angrily. “If you do I’ll go my way and wish a curse on you!”
“Sit still!” commanded Rimsky. “I’ve money enough, I tell you. If not, I can go and borrow from my rich friends.”
Ilya laughed so loudly at this that he disturbed the drunken Buriat, who lifted his black head from the table and glared about the room. He looked like a mandarin, with his long thin drooping mustaches.
“But I tell you I have rich friends,” insisted Rimsky. “I could go now and get a hundred rubles if I needed them—yes, twenty and a hundred and no interest. Kirsakoff would let me have them, and no questions asked, and nothing about when they should be paid back.”
“What!” exclaimed Ilya, staring at Rimsky. “You say the old Governor would lend you twenty and a hundred rubles! Tfu! That’s crazy talk!”
“Yes! You think I don’t know the old Governor, eh! Well, Kirsakoff is a friend of mine, you had better know that.”
“Pooh!” snorted Ilya. “You are an old mud-head! You don’t even know where the old Governor lives in the city, and you sit there telling to me that he is your friend! Oh, ho, ho!”
“Perhaps you think you are the only one who knows where Kirsakoff lives? You are a fool who thinks he is wise, and that’s the worst fool of all.”
Ilya was cautious at once. He gave Rimsky a careful look, but Rimsky paid no attention to the look.