“I am glad you like it. I come here to rest after a worry with passports and nihilists,” the gendarme said, with a look which was lost on me.
My attention had been attracted from the first by a full-length portrait of a young man hanging over the mantel.
“Nicol Patoff!” I exclaimed, clasping my hands with a firm grip, and feeling the tears spring to my eyes, as my thoughts went back to the old schoolroom, the lessons learned there, and the handsome young Russian whom this portrait brought so vividly to my mind.
It must have been taken before he came to America, when he was not more than twenty, but there was no mistaking the fair, smooth face, the lines of the mouth just breaking into a laugh, or the expression of the soft, brown eyes, with that far-away look in them.
“You recognize it?” the gendarme said, and I answered, quickly: “Recognize it! Of course I do! I should know Nicol wherever I met him, whether in his old home or in the wilds of Siberia. He was younger when this was taken than when I knew him. He is an old man now.”
“Yes, very old,” the gendarme replied, sarcastically. “Forty-five, at least. Old enough to die, if he is not already dead.”
By this time my companions had crowded around the picture, commenting upon it and wondering where the original was, and how his portrait came into the possession of the Seguins. It was Mary, as usual, who asked direct questions.
“Funny his portrait should be here, if he had anywhere to put it. How came you by it, and where is he?” she asked.
The gendarme did not answer at once, but seemed to be considering what to say. Then he suddenly grew very communicative.
“As you are so interested in the Patoffs, and some of you knew Nicol,” he said, “I may tell you that the family was once very wealthy, but reverses came, and they sold this house to us, with all there was in it. They were leaving the city for Constantinople, and did not care to take anything with them. Some time they might return, they said, but they never have.” He was sitting near an old-fashioned writing desk of mahogany, and, putting his hand upon it, he continued: “This was Nicol’s desk, and in it are some souvenirs he must have picked up in America, and perhaps forgot to take with him, or intended to come back for them. There is a dollar greenback, a fifty-cent piece, a little silk flag with stars and stripes, and——!” he hesitated a moment, and then went on: “In a small, pearl box, and tied with a white ribbon, is a long curl of hair—a woman’s hair. Please let me open that window. You look faint, and it is very warm here,” he said, breaking suddenly from his talk of Nicol’s treasures, and raising a sash behind me, as he saw me gasp for breath.