“I am mad,” she said to her interrogators. “This young man was not my son; he had not his voice. Let us think no more of it. If we do, I shall end in finding him everywhere.”
This scene, however, was immediately reported to Ivan Ogareff, who was stationed in the town. He at once arrested Michael Strogoff, and then had Marfa brought before him. Marfa, standing before Ivan Ogareff, drew herself up, crossed her arms on her breast, and waited. “You are Marfa Strogoff?” asked Ogareff.
“Yes.”
“Do you retract what you said a few hours ago?”
“No.”
“Then you do not know that your son, Michael Strogoff, Courier to the Czar, has passed through Omsk?”
“I do not know it.”
“And the man whom you thought you recognized as your son was not your son?”
“He was not my son.”
“And since then, you have seen him among the prisoners?”