The floor-tiling in the hall was loose and had long needed repair, but I tiptoed over it gently and without noise. Then, with one foot on the bottom stair, I stopped dead. What was that disturbance on the first landing just over my head? I listened intently.
Whispering.
There must be two or three people on the first landing, conferring in low tones, and from the direction of the voices it was clear they were just outside the Journalist’s door. I caught the word “pick-lock,” and somebody passed some keys, one of which seemed to be inserted in the lock.
Thieves, possibly. But robbery was becoming rare in these days when the bourgeoisie had scarcely anything more to be relieved of, and anyway why should the Journalist’s flat particularly be selected and the theft perpetrated in broad daylight? It was far more likely that the dwelling was to be subjected to a sudden search, and that the raiders wished to surprise the occupant or occupants without giving them time to secrete anything. In any case, thieves or searchers, this was no place for me. I turned and tiptoed hurriedly out of the hall.
And very foolish it was of me to hurry, too! for I should have remembered the flooring was out of repair. The loose tiles rattled beneath my feet like pebbles, the noise was heard above, and down the stairs there charged a heavy pair of boots. Outside was better than in, anyway, so I did not stop, but just as I was slipping into the street I was held up from behind by a big burly workman, dressed in a leathern jacket covered with belts of cartridges, who held a revolver at my head.
It is a debatable point, which tactics is more effective in a tight corner—to laugh defiantly with brazen audacity, or to assume a crazy look of utter imbecility. Practised to an extreme, either will pull you through almost any scrape, provided your adversary displays a particle of doubt or hesitancy. From my present bedraggled and exhausted appearance to one of vacant stupidity was but a step, so when the cartridge-bedecked individual challenged me with his revolver and demanded to know my business, I met his gaze with terrified, blinking eyes, shaking limbs, slobbering lips, and halting speech.
“Stand!” he bawled; “what do you want here?” His voice was raucous and threatening.
I looked up innocently over his head at the lintel of the door.
“Is—is this No. 29?” I stammered, with my features contorted into an insane grin. “It is—I—I mistook it for No. 39, wh-which I want. Thank you.”
Mumbling and leering idiotically, I limped off like a cripple. Every second I expected to hear him shout an order to halt. But he merely glared, and I remembered I had seen just such a glare before, on the face of that other man whom I encountered in Marsh’s house on the day of my first arrival in Petrograd. As I stumbled along, looking up with blinking eyes at all the shop- and door-lintels as I passed them, I saw out of the corner of my eye that the cartridge-covered individual had lowered his revolver to his side. Then he turned and re-entered the house.