“Let him sleep,” said Ilya to the girl. “He is a good fellow,” and putting the cork back into the vodka-bottle which was half full by the best of good luck, he slipped it into his pocket, pulled his ragged old coat about his shoulders and tightened the rope belt. Then he slipped out of the restaurant, chuckling at his cleverness at putting Rimsky under the table and learning something which might put money into his own purse. Besides, he had the half-bottle of vodka.

He made up his mind to go at once to the house of Michael Alexandrovitch Kirsakoff and sell the news he had heard—an American officer was at the Hotel Dauria and wanted to find the old Governor. Perhaps Michael would give five rubles for that news—if not five, then four, anyhow, a piece of boiled partridge. But Ilya decided that he would do his best to get five rubles. Michael Kirsakoff had plenty of money, and who was he anyway?—once a Governor, true, but no better now than Ilya Andreitch.

VIII
PETER LAYS HIS PLANS

PETER went back to the Hotel Dauria after his talk with Rimsky. The sleepy-eyed youth who had promised a room, carried Peter’s baggage to the upper floor, where Peter signed the register in a cage-like little office.

Then they went on down a hall past a dining room which was deserted. Peter looked in. It was filled with battered tables, tubbed rubber plants in the window sills, and crazy chairs which had been used in defense and had legs in splints.

The walls had been stripped of paper. The mirrors of the buffet-counter at one end of the room had been smashed out and triangles of broken glass still stuck in the frames. The curtains had been pulled from the poles over the windows and the doors. Painted decorations on the wainscoting had been smeared with the contents of catsup and vinegar bottles, which had burst against the walls like star shells and the acids had discolored the pictures of the crude drawings so that the wall was spotted and leprous-looking.

Peter was taken to a large room at the end of the hall. It had three double windows overlooking the end of a side street that ran into the Sofistkaya, with a view of the latter. He could see the old post-house and the roof of Rimsky’s hut sticking up between two higher buildings.

There was an iron bed without bedding. There was a standing screen in front of it. The chairs had been broken but were repaired. There were slashes in the woodwork about the door where bayonets had evidently been thrust at former guests. And some of the guests had fared badly, judging by the dark stains on the old oilcloth which covered the floor.

The plaster of the walls was pitted with bullet-holes, especially opposite the windows, and the panes of glass were newly puttied and still marked with the thumb-prints of the workmen.