“That’s all right; pray continue, though I give you my word you won’t find anything treasonable. I’m a foreigner, as of course you know; and I haven’t the least wish or intention to mix myself up with Russian affairs.”
“And yet you correspond with the Grand Duke Loris,” he said dryly.
“I don’t!” I answered promptly. “I’ve never written a line to that gentleman in my life, nor he to me.”
“There are other ways of corresponding than by writing,” he retorted. I guessed I had been watched to the café after all, but I maintained an air of innocent unconcern, and, after all, his remark might be merely a “feeler.” I rather think now that it was. One can never be sure how much the Russian Secret Police do, or do not, know; and one of their pet tricks is to bluff people into giving themselves away.
So I ignored his remark, selected a cigarette, and, seeing that he had just finished his—I’ve wondered sometimes if a Russian official sleeps with a cigarette between his lips, for I fear he wouldn’t sleep comfortably without!—handed him the case, with an apology for my remissness. He accepted both the apology and the cigarette, and looked at me hard.
“I said, Monsieur, that there are other ways of corresponding than by writing!” he repeated with emphasis.
“Of course there are,” I assented cheerfully. “But I don’t see what that has to do with me in the present instance. I only know the Grand Duke very slightly. I was hurt in that railway accident last month, and his Highness was good enough to order one of his servants to look after me; and he also called to see me at an hotel in Dunaburg. I thought it very condescending of him. Though I don’t suppose I’d have the chance of meeting him again, as there are no Court festivities now; or if there are, we outsiders aren’t invited to them. Won’t your friend accept one of my cigarettes?”
This was addressed to the other man, who seemed to be doing all the work, and was puzzling over some pencil notes in English which he had picked out of my waste-paper basket. They were the draft of my yesterday’s despatch to the Courier, a perfectly innocuous communication that I had sent openly; it didn’t matter whether it arrived at its destination or not. As I have said, Petersburg was quiet to stagnation just now; though one never knew when the material for some first-class sensational copy might turn up.