Suddenly Drexel leaned back and roared with laughter. That he should on the one hand be searched for by the police, and on the other hand be held prisoner by the revolutionists—the absurdity of the situation was too much for him. And the situation seemed all the more absurd as he considered the personality of his captors—two starveling, threadbare lads. Yet even as he laughed he did not forget the grimness of his state—the prey of both contending parties. And ere his humour had subsided, he was beginning to rate his guards a little higher; for Ivan, hunched up on the floor with his back to the door, Drexel’s weapon on his knees, was as watchful as a terrier, and there was a high and purposeful determination in Nicolai’s pale face that could but command respect.
It was a quality of Drexel’s, one of the several on which his uncle based his predictions of his nephew’s business success, that when in a plight where he could not help himself, he could easily throw off all strength-exhausting thought and worry. He now stretched himself on the sofa, whose bones all painfully protruded through its starved skin, and drew his coat over him. “You fellows can make a night of it if you want to, but I’m going to sleep,” said he, and a few minutes later he was peacefully unconscious.
When he awoke the niggardly light of a leaden-hued Russian morning was creeping through the single window. For a time he walked restlessly up and down the room. Then he paused before the double-glazed window, which was curtained at the bottom, and looked out.
“You see the pavement is of cobblestones, so to jump would be dangerous,” commented the quiet voice of Nicolai.
Drexel glanced back. “Huh!” he grunted. But all the same he was startled at the keenness with which Nicolai had read his mind.
“Besides,” Nicolai went on, “the windows are screwed down. And even if you burst them and got safely to the ground you would only be arrested by the police.”
Drexel shrugged his shoulders and continued gazing out into the court. It was a dreary enough area, with a few snow-capped houses huddling frozenly about it, its monotony relieved only by a little stuccoed church adjoining, with five dingy blue domes spangled with stars of weather-worn gilt—five tarnished counterfeits of heaven. Ivan, who had come to his side, volunteered that it was called The Church of the Three Saints, and that this court, by virtue of its adjacency, was known as Three Saints’ Court.
Drexel resumed his pacing of the room. “This is a pretty stupid party you have invited me to,” he yawned at length—whereupon Ivan got out an old deck of cards, remarking that they never had time to play these days, and proceeded to teach him sixty-six, Nicolai keeping a steady eye on them all the while. The game was too simple to be of much interest, but what with it, and eating, and more chatter from Ivan, the short dim day faded into sullen dusk, then deepened into the long northern night.
Around eight o’clock footsteps were heard in the adjoining room. Presently there was a knock and on Ivan opening the door there entered two men, one about thirty and the other possibly forty, in caps, high boots and belted blouses beneath their coats. Despite their workingmen’s dress, Drexel could tell by the deference given them by his guards (though they all called one another “comrade”) that they were not what their clothes pronounced them. The older might be a doctor, or a lawyer, or a professor. They informed Ivan and Nicolai that there would be a little meeting in the next room, and that they might have a couple of hours off duty. The two lads went out, and after them the two men, and locked the door behind them.
By this time Drexel had guessed that this place, which hid from the police behind the mask of a workingmen’s boarding-house, was in reality a conspirative headquarters of the revolutionists. His first thought, on being left alone, was of escape. But after a little thinking he realised that what Nicolai had said of the window was quite true, that his only avenue of escape was through the next room, and that he was quite as securely guarded as if the men were in this room beside him.