“I believe these men here have come to rob me,” he cried in French. “What do you say, my son?—Shall I call the police?”
“Hold on,” replied Rouletabille impassively. “They are all armed; they have revolvers in their pockets.”
Pere Alexis’s teeth commenced to chatter. As he tried to get near the door he was roughly pushed back and a final personage entered, apparently a gentleman, and dressed as such, save that he wore a visored leather cap.
“Ah,” said he at once in French, “why, it is the young French journalist of the Grand-Morskaia Hotel. Salutations and your good health! I see with pleasure that you also appreciate the counsels of our dear Pere Alexis.”
“Don’t listen to him, little friend; I don’t know him,” cried Alexis Hutch.
But the gentleman of the Neva went on:
“He is a man close to the first principles of science, and therefore not far from divine; he is a holy man, whom it is good to consult at moments when the future appears difficult. He knows how to read as no one else can—Father John of Cronstadt excepted, to be strictly accurate—on the sheets of bull-hide where the dark angels have traced mysterious signs of destiny.”
Here the gentleman picked up an old pair of boots, which he threw on the counter in the midst of the ikons.
“Pere Alexis, perhaps these are not bull-hide, but good enough cow-hide. Don’t you want to read on this cow-hide the future of this young man?”
But here Rouletabille advanced to the gentleman, and blew an enormous cloud of smoke full in his face.