He shrugged his shoulders.
“Have it your own way. You will regret your obstinacy later; remember, I have warned you.”
“Thanks,—it’s good of you, Mirakoff; but I’ve told you all I mean to tell any one.”
He paused, biting his mustache, and frowning down at me.
“Fetch more water,” he said abruptly to the soldier, who had heard all that passed, and might or might not understand; the Russians are a polyglot people.
“I have done what I could,” Mirakoff continued hurriedly in the brief interval while we were alone. “You had two passports. I took the false one,—it is yonder; they will think it belongs to one of the dead men. Your own is still in your pocket; the police will take it when you get to prison; at least it will show your identity, and may make things easier.”
“Thanks, again,” I said earnestly. “And if you could contrive to send word to the American or English Embassy, or both.”
“I’ll see what I can do. Give him the water,” he added, as the soldier again returned.
He watched as I drank, then turned on his heel and left me, without another word. He had, as I knew, already compromised his dignity sufficiently by conversing with me at all.