I could do nothing but wait till the boy had executed the commission of obtaining my leave for departure, for which it was then evident he had been privately sent from the hotel ahead of me, contrary to my expressed wish. So I philosophically improved the occasion to look about the place. From my position one could see into the adjoining large room. There, at a square table, sat a middle-aged man with a refined face, a mustache artistically curled, and a delicate white hand, on the little finger of which sparkled a large diamond that shone to great advantage as he raised it to his lips and withdrew or replaced a cigarette. Before him was a pile of papers, which he was signing, or indorsing, or stamping with official seals, and looking somewhat bored as he performed that automatic task. Men came and bowed to him deferentially, and took orders which issued languidly from his lips between the whiffs. That imp of a boy stood in the background, with the precious passport opened out wide, so that I could see the spread-eagle water-mark (about two feet square) through it against a window. He grinned as he caught my eye, and, though I now feared that he had baffled my cherished design of penetrating the sanctum sanctorum, I could not help smiling back at him; observing which act, one of the policemen standing near looked hard at me as if to check the display of any levity in that place. So I became grim again, and fell to contrasting the stylish and genial appearance of the police magnate yonder with the serious, gruff, heavy-bearded, and cruel-eyed person who would have seemed (according to English reports) the most natural occupant of that chair.
Meanwhile my curiosity was also excited in another quarter. Just in front of me, within a space inclosed by an iron railing with an elaborate pattern of cross-bars, was a little crowd of Russians. They were all looking by turns at me and at the two policemen. “Can it be possible,” I thought, “that they—evidently prisoners themselves, penned up there and awaiting orders which will consign them to dungeons or to Siberia—suppose me also to be under arrest? I certainly detect in their faces marks of sympathy and fellow-feeling.”
I study the motley group at leisure. One of the number may have been a student, for he had a thoughtful face; but I was pained to remark a fierce expression in his eyes, as if he had absorbed the deadly virus of Nihilism. “Rash boy! most likely implicated in the latest plot (for full particulars, see highly imaginative dispatches in the London press) for assassinating the Tsar. And there is a young girl with a pretty face; another Nihilist, probably—the misguided student’s sweetheart, it may be. They say that women are the most fanatical disciples of the new dispensation. By her side stands a priest of the Greek Church in his cylindrical black cap and full robes, which he has disgraced by some offense—trivial, let us hope. But he, too, may be a Nihilist, for we are told that the gospel of anarchy draws some recruits from the ranks of the priesthood.” A soldier in fatigue-dress, and some other men or women whose station in life one could not fix, composed the rest of the company behind that grill, all (perhaps) arrested for alleged Nihilism. This gave them, in my eyes, a tragic interest which the common ruck of misdemeanants would have lacked. Who can tell what they thought of me, as they reciprocated the curiosity bestowed upon them?
Engrossed in these interesting speculations, I had clean forgotten the object of my visit until recalled from the reverie by the apparition of the ever-smiling boy. He stood before me with the passport open, and pointed out a new streak of inscription running down the back. It had been obligingly furnished without any further information about my identity than he had supplied. Thus ended ingloriously the only opportunity which had presented itself to learn from personal observation anything about the police system of Russia. I folded the passport with a sigh, and thrust it into its pocket. As I did so, one of the gorodovois courteously indicated that my departure was now in order. His long forefinger pointed to the door.
As I rose to go, an official-looking personage came out of the chief’s audience-room and walked briskly to the little knot of expectant culprits behind that iron railing, which needed only a roof to make it a cage. I halted a moment to see what would happen next. The Nihilists began to look anxious, and I shared their emotions. What followed was interpreted to me by gestures which could not be mistaken. The official personage shook his head at the group, as if he were denying them something. They seemed to entreat him. He only shook his head more determinedly. As they persisted in trying to overcome his objections, he brandished both hands at them in a manner which plainly said: “It’s no use; go away; out of this now!” And this with so much energy that the party in the pen instinctively fell back; and, as they did so, the door behind them was flung open, disclosing, not a perspective of cells as I had expected, but an outside stairway, the blue sky, and a tree in leaf, all belonging to the free world, into which they hastened for the labors or pleasures of the day! Putting this and that fact together, I was impelled to the conclusion that these people were, after all, not Nihilists or offenders of any rank, but only respectable citizens of Moscow, who had called at the chief’s office to lay some request before him, and that he had either decided to deny it, or else had put off their reception to another day. And I never came any nearer than this to identifying a Nihilist in Russia.
Translated into English, this final indorsement of the passport reads as follows:
July, 15/27, 1886.
On behalf of the local police, there is no objection to John Bouton and wife, American citizens named in this passport, leaving Moscow for abroad.
Captain of the city precinct,
(Signed) Dvoronin.
There was quite a galaxy of stamps affixed, making a total charge of ninety-five kopecks—less than fifty cents gold value. The hotel assumed the payment of this fee, and, adding a trifle for the services of its “representative,” or “agent,” or “man” (the small boy), inserted in my bill a lump item of one ruble fifty kopecks on “passport” account. And I advise all American tourists to transact this kind of business by proxy instead of wasting droschky-fares in unproductive visits to the chief of police.