I told him the story briefly, and described the man as well as I could.
“Carl Zimosky, by Heaven!” he exclaimed, bringing his fist down upon his side, and addressing himself to the women, one of whom nodded.
Then, turning to me, with an angry frown, he continued: “And you let him escape! You let Carl Zimosky go, when you might have kept him so easily! Carl Zimosky is one of the worst felons we have, and is slippery as an eel—a thief and a pickpocket. A sick wife and two starving children! He has no wife, nor children. He is not twenty-one. We have had him up twice.”
“Yes, he told me he had been in a dungeon and under the knout, and they made him worse,” I said, looking at him very calmly and coolly.
“And perhaps that is the reason you let him go. You thought him a nihilist, and I’ve been told you sympathize with them. Madame,” he continued, his voice growing louder and his manner so offensive that Chance got up, looked at him and growled, shook his sides, looked at me, and lay down again, nearer to me, with his head stretched forward, as if listening, while the gendarme went on: “Madame, these things may do in the United States, but not here in Russia! You may get into trouble, if you are a woman and an American!”
He fairly swelled with importance as he delivered this threatening speech, which did not move me, except to make me angry. I was not afraid. I knew that, at a word from me, Chance would have him by the throat, and of what might come after that I did not think or care.
“Sir!” I began, rising to my feet, in order to look over the heads of the women, who at the man’s angry words had gathered in front of me, like a fence, to keep me from harm. “Sir! do you think I am going to stay all the afternoon keeping guard over Carl Simpsy, or Simpson, or whatever his name is, waiting for you, or some other laggard, to come? Where were you, that you were not attending to your business? I have seen policemen in all parts of the city except here, where, it seems, they are needed——”
“And where you ought never to have come,” he interrupted, in a much lower tone than he had at first assumed. “It is no place for women, alone, and I don’t believe you’d got away with any money or jewelry you may have about you now, if it were not for that dog. Where, in Heaven’s name, did he come from? I thought Seguin was out of town. This Zimosky is suspected of robbing his house last night, and we are looking for him.”
“Robbed Michel Seguin’s house!” I exclaimed, a half wish throbbing through my brain that I had detained the man.
The gendarme must have guessed my thought, for he said, with a sneering smile: “Madame feels differently now that Seguin is concerned. I have heard you were very friendly with him.”