When the maid, in response to the ring, opened the door, several men filed into the hall, awkwardly jostling one another—house-porters,[23] gendarmes, detectives, an Inspector of the police, an officer of the gendarmerie, two petty constables. The maid stood speechless with fright. The police inspector shouted at her:
“Get back to the kitchen!”
A detachment of policemen and porters remained outside under the command of the Inspector of the constabulary. They watched to see that no one entered or left the Svetilovitch house.
Altogether about twenty policemen entered the house. For some unknown reason they were armed with rifles with fixed bayonets. Three hideous-looking men in civilian clothes kept close to the policemen. These were the detectives. Two policemen stationed themselves at the entrance, two others ran to the telephone, which was attached to a wall in the hall. It was evident that everything had been arranged beforehand by a manager expert in such matters. The rest of the men tumbled into the drawing-room. The Inspector of the police stretched his neck and, assuming a tense red expression and bulging his eyes, shouted very loudly.
“Don’t any one dare to move from his place!”
And he looked round in self-satisfaction at the officer of the gendarmerie.
The men and the women remained transfixed in their places, as if they were acting a tableau. They were looking silently at the new-comers.
The policemen, awkwardly holding their rifles, tramped with their ponderous boots on the parquet-floor and made their way about the rooms. They paused at all the doors, looked at the visitors timorously and savagely, uneasily pressed the barrels of their rifles, and tried to look like real soldiers. It was evident that these zealous people were ready to fire at any one whomsoever at the first suspicious movement: they thought that a band of conspirators had gathered here.
All the rooms were overrun with these strangers. It began to smell of bad tobacco, sweat, and vodka. Many of them drank to keep their courage up: they were afraid of a possible armed resistance.
A gendarme placed his Colonel’s voluminous portfolio on the grand piano in the drawing-room. The Colonel, stepping forward to the middle of the room, so that the light of the centre cluster of lamps fell almost directly upon his bald forehead and upon his bushy, sandy-haired moustache, pronounced in an official tone: