Five minutes later Pasha started for the front door, nodding to me to follow. I turned to see if Paul was coming, too, but he shook his head.
Not a word passed between us as we threaded our way through devious alleys’ turnings and finally stepped into the doorway of a dark and dingy building. We mounted four flights of stairs to what looked to me an unfinished attic, divided by rough partitions into two large storerooms. At one end of this attic was a closet, or what I took for a closet. Pasha went straight to this closet, stopped, gave two quick knocks upon the door, a pause and then another; the door was immediately opened—by the factory-girl who had left us so abruptly a quarter of an hour before. As I stepped through the closet into a broad room she addressed me in exquisite French. Beyond her, in a big, bare room I could see many soldiers and sailors—fifteen or twenty, or more.
Small attention was paid to us while I stood in open-mouthed wonder at the scene. The rooms were scantily furnished, but in the corners were towering piles of pamphlets, proclamations, and other forbidden literature. Near the door a great hulking sailor was stuffing his high boot-legs with dozens of proclamations. Another was wrapping scores of brochures about his body, much as I had carried a certain book across the frontier. In the inner room the men were standing in little groups earnestly talking to one another in subdued voices. Again some one knocked on the door and my factory-girl admitted two soldiers, who went straight to a pile of leaflets which proved to be revolutionary songs printed on thin sheets of paper. These fellows stuffed quantities of the leaflets under their trousers, pulled their belts tight, and went out.
Pasha, in the meantime, had thrown off her street clothes and had taken from a cupboard a loaf of black bread and a dish of butter and was making herself a sandwich with a most unconcerned air. A shining nickel samovar was steaming merrily on a kitchen-table near by and from time to time some soldier or sailor would prepare himself a glass of tea. I tried to look as unconcerned as the rest of them acted, but I felt a cold chill go up and down my spine every time a footstep sounded outside or a knock resounded on the door. I was, of course, keenly alive to the constant danger of detection that hung over this little band. And my nervous dread, though largely vicarious, was none the less demoralizing. In an endeavor to keep my nerve I began to ply Pasha with questions. In the first place, who was the girl dressed like a factory-worker? Pasha finished her sandwich, smiling at my bewilderment, then told me that she was the daughter of one of the largest landholders in south Russia. Her family name is older than the name of Romanoff—and for generations her fathers have been dignitaries of the court. This girl was supposed to be studying music in St. Petersburg. Her family were aware of her “liberal sympathies,” but no one had ever suspected her of being active, much less a leader, in the military organization.
There were two or three other young women in the room, all of them from cultivated families.
“But how do you prevent the dwornik [the house doorkeeper] from reporting these meetings?” I asked, for I knew that as a rule the dworniks are police agents.
Pasha called to a young man in a dark-blue blouse.
“This is our dwornik,” she said.
The man was a student from Moscow University, who, as a member of the military organization, had come to Kronstadt and secured a job as doorkeeper simply that conspirative headquarters might be established as I saw them there.
We were still talking to this dwornik when the now familiar knock was rapped out on the door. This time an officer of the rank of surgeon entered. He shook hands with every one, then called Pasha and the other women one side. The gist of his errand was that he wanted to induce Pasha to come into his home to live, ostensibly as governess to his children. He occupied a cottage within the fortress, and Pasha, living there, would be in daily contact with many soldiers and sailors. To Pasha it seemed a wonderful opportunity for establishing a headquarters in the very heart of Kronstadt. As always with these revolutionists, Pasha thought only of the opportunity and nothing at all of the risks involved.