»I don't like lying there like that. I want to get dressed.«
Then she must have put something on and sat down; for the chair creaked ever so little; and it became so still—as silent as though the room were empty. The stillness lasted a long time; and then the calm, serious voice spoke:
»I think, Liuba, there is still one cognac left on the table. Take a drink and come and lie down again.«
Day was already dawning, and in the house all was as quiet as in any other house, when the police appeared. After long arguments and hesitations Mark had been dispatched to the police station with the revolver and cartridges and a circumstantial account of the strange visitor. The police at once guessed who he was. For three days they had had him on their nerves. They had been seeing him here, there, and everywhere; but finally, all trace of him had been lost. Somebody had suggested searching the brothels of the district; but just then somebody else got another false clue, so the public resorts were forgotten.
The telephone tinkled excitedly. Half an hour later, in the chill of the October morning, heavy boots were scrunching the hoar-frost and along the empty streets moved in silence a company of policemen and detectives. In front of them, feeling in every inch of his body what a mistake it was to take the risks of such exposure, marched the district superintendent, an elderly man, very tall, in a thick official overcoat, the shape of a sack. He was yawning, burying his flabby red nose in his grey whiskers; and he was thinking that he ought to wait for the military; that it was nonsense to go for such a man without soldiers, with nothing but stupid drowsy policemen who didn't know how to shoot. More than once he reached the point of calling himself the slave of duty, yawning every time long and heavily.
The superintendent was a drunkard, a regular debauchee of the resorts of his district; and they paid him heavily for the right to exist. He had no desire to die. When they called him from his bed, he had nursed his revolver for a long time from one greasy palm to the other, and although there was little time to spare he had ordered them to clean his jacket, as though for a review. That very night at the police station, he remembered, conversation had turned on this same man who had been dodging them all, and the superintendent, with the cynicism of an old sot, had called the man a hero and himself an old police trollop. When his assistants laughed, he had assured them that such heroes must exist, if only to be hanged. »You hang him—and it pleases you both: him because he is going straight to the Kingdom of Heaven, and you as a demonstration that brave men still exist. Don't snigger—it's true.«
On that chill October morning, marching along the cold streets, he appreciated clearly that the talk of yesterday was lies; that the man was nothing but a rascal. He was ashamed of his own boyish extravagance.
»A hero, indeed!« the superintendent prayerfully recanted. »Lord, if he so much as stirs a finger, the blackguard, I'll kill him like a dog. By God, I will!«
And that set him thinking why he, the superintendent, an old man full of gout, so much desired to live. Because there was hoar frost on the streets? He turned round and shouted savagely: »Quick march, there! Don't go like sheep!«