BACK TO ENGLAND
We started for England the next night, second class, and travelled right through, as I stood the journey better than any of us expected. After we crossed the frontier, I doubt if any of our fellow travellers, or any one else, for the matter of that, had the least suspicion that I was a prisoner being taken back to stand my trial on the gravest of all charges, and not merely an invalid, assiduously tended by my two companions. I didn’t even realize the fact myself at the time,—or at least I only realized it now and then.
“Well, Mr. Wynn, you’ve looked your last on Russia, and jolly glad I should be if I were you,” Freeman remarked cheerfully when we were in the train again, on the way to Konigsberg.
“Looked my last,—what do you mean?” Even as I spoke I remembered why he was in charge of me, and laughed.
“Oh, I suppose you think you’re going to hang me on this preposterous murder charge.”
He was upset that I should imagine him guilty of such a breach of what he called professional etiquette, as, it seemed, any reference to my present position would have been.
“I meant that, if you wanted to go back, you wouldn’t be allowed to. They’ve fired you out, and won’t have you again at any price,” he explained stiffly.
“Oh, won’t they? I guess they will if I want to go. Look here, Freeman, I bet you twenty dollars, say five pounds English, that I’ll be back in Russia within six months from this date,—that is, if I think fit,—and that they’ll admit me all right. You’d have to trust me, for I can’t deposit the stakes at present; I will when we get back to England. Is it a deal?”
His answer was enigmatic, and I took it as complimentary.
“Well, you are a cough-drop!” he exclaimed. “No, I can’t take the bet,—’twouldn’t be professional; though I’d like to know, without prejudice, as the lawyers say, why on earth you should want to go back. I should have thought you’d had quite enough of it.”