Putting down her pail of water, she turned toward me, and was about to speak, when Mrs. Browne rushed in, her face flushed, her eyes protruding, and the false piece she wore on the front of her head all awry, as if she had put her hand suddenly to her hair and pushed it aside.
“What do you think?” she began, dropping into a chair, and wiping her face with her apron, “that a peace-abiding woman should be so disgraced and insulted! The police, or one of them—that high-up one, Seguin—is here in my kitchen, questioning the servants as to whether they had seen Ivan Scholaskie about the premises!
“Ivan Scholaskie, indeed! How would they know him, or harbor him, when they are true as steel to the czar? I told the fellow so, and he laughed, and said: ‘Maybe, but I’d like to see them. There may be some acquaintances among them, or possibly they have means of secreting a comrade. Can I see their rooms?’ I was so mad! And I wish I had never rented this Scholaskie house. I believe it reeks with the very atmosphere of them. Ivan here, indeed! Where is he?”
I could not enlighten her, and she went on: “I called the servants together, and told him to ask them what he pleased.”
“‘Are these all you have in your employ?’ he asked, and I told him all, except old Alex, who was in Miss Harding’s room. I’d call her.
“‘No,’ he said. ‘It does not matter. I must go to Miss Harding’s room; to all the rooms, in fact.’
“Then I gave him a piece of my mind; insulting me, an English woman! And I come to warn you not to be scared. He really acts like a gentleman, and as if he hated his work. I must go now and tell the other guests. Alex, be cool, if he questions you, and be sure and clean that mantel and hearth as they ought to be cleaned, and have not been in a week.”
She hurried away, and as Mrs. Whitney, at the first mention of police, had fled to her room, I was alone with old Alex, who turned her face toward me with a reassuring smile, and then went on with her work.
“Alex,” I said, “if he asks you if you have seen Ivan, what will you tell him?”
“A lie, of course,” was the prompt reply. “We all have to do that, and ask forgiveness afterward.”