"Go to the devil!"
Yevsey remained alone.
"Well, there," thought he, "there's another fellow—all alike. First they draw me on, then they push me away."
The vengeful feeling toward Olga awoke in him, and blended with his sense of ill-will toward all people, which found ample nourishment in his soul powerless to resist because of the poison of many insults. Yevsey vigorously set to work to enmeshing himself in a net of new moods, and he served now with a dull zeal hitherto unknown to him.
Gradually the night came upon which it had been decided to arrest Olga, Yakov, and all implicated in the affair of the printing-press whom Yevsey had succeeded in tracking. He knew that the printing-office was located in the wing of a house set in a garden and occupied by a large red-bearded man named Kostya and his wife, a stout, pock-marked woman. He also knew that Olga was the servant of these two people. Kostya's head was close cropped, and his wife had a grey face and roaming eyes. Upon Yevsey both produced the impression of witless persons, or persons who have lain in a hospital a long time.
"What fearful people they are!" he remarked to Yakov when he pointed them out one evening during a party at Makarov's lodging.
Yakov loved to boast of his acquaintances. He proudly shook his curly head, and explained with an air of importance:
"It's from their hard life. They work in cellars at night, where it is damp, and the air is close. They get their rest in prison. Both of them are fugitives, who live on other people's passports. Such a life turns everybody inside out and upside down. They're jolly people, too. When Kostya begins to tell about his life, you would think it is nothing but tears, but he talks so that when he is done, your sides ache from laughing. You can't trap such people very easily."
Klimkov decided to get a last look at Olga. He learned through what street the prisoners would be led, and went to meet them, trying to persuade himself that all this did not touch him. All the time he was thinking about the girl.
"She'll certainly be frightened. She'll cry."