“The blades are pretty blunt, I am afraid,” observed the Doctor, as he produced his Gillette razor and placed it on the table before me. “They still mow me all right, but I’ve got a soft chin. The man who smuggles a box-full of razor-blades into this country will make his fortune. Here’s the brush, and soap—my last piece.”
It was late in the afternoon of the same day. I sat in the Doctor’s study before a mirror, getting ready to perform an excruciating surgical operation, namely, the removal with a blunt safety-razor of the shaggy hirsute appendage that for nearly six months had decorated my cheeks, chin, and nether lip.
The Doctor, as you see, was still at liberty. It was with some trepidation that I had approached his house on this day when everything seemed to be going wrong. But we had agreed upon a sign by which I might know, every time I called, whether it were safe to enter. A large box was placed in the window in such a position as to be visible from the street. Its absence would be a danger-signal. The Doctor had suggested this device as much for his own sake as mine: he had no desire that I should come stumbling in if he were engaged in an altercation with a delegation from No. 2 Goróhovaya, and there was no house in the city that was immune from these unwelcome visitors. But the box was in the window, so I was in the flat.
Before operating with the razor I reduced my beard as far as possible with the scissors. Even this altered my appearance to a remarkable degree. Then I brought soap-brush and blade into play—but the less said of the ensuing painful hour the better! The Doctor then assumed the rôle of hair-dresser. He cut off my flowing locks, and, though it was hardly necessary, dyed my hair coal-black with some German dyestuff he had got.
Except for one detail, my transformation was now complete. Cutting open the lapel of the jacket I was discarding, I extracted a tiny paper packet, and, unwrapping it, took out the contents—my missing tooth, carefully preserved for this very emergency. A little wadding served effectually as a plug. I inserted it in the gaping aperture in my top row of teeth, and what had so recently been a diabolic leer became a smile as seemly (I hope) as that of any other normal individual.
The clean-shaven, short-haired, tidy but indigent-looking person in eye-glasses, who made his way down the Doctor’s staircase next morning attired in the Doctor’s old clothes, resembled the shaggy-haired, limping maniac of the previous day about as nearly as he did the cook who preceded him down the stairs. The cook was going to engage the house-porter’s attention if the latter presented himself, in order that he might not notice the exit of a person who had never entered. So when the cook disappeared into the porter’s cave-like abode just inside the front door, covering with her back the little glass window through which he or his wife always peered, and began greeting the pair with enthusiastic heartiness, I slipped unnoticed into the street.
In the dilapidated but capacious boots the Doctor found for me I was able to walk slowly without limping. But I used a walking-stick, and this added curiously to my new appearance, which I think may be described as that of an ailing, underfed “intellectual” of the student type. It is a fact that during these days, when in view of my lameness I could not move rapidly, I passed unmolested and untouched out of more than one scuffle when raiders rounded up “speculators,” and crossed the bridges without so much as being asked for my papers.
It took me several days to get thoroughly accustomed to my new exterior. I found myself constantly glancing into mirrors and shop-windows in the street, smiling with amusement at my own reflection. In the course of ensuing weeks and months, I encountered several people with whom I had formerly had connections, and though some of them looked me in the face I was never recognized.
It was about a week later, when walking along the river-quay, that I espied to my surprise on the other side of the road Melnikoff’s friend of Viborg days whom I had hoped to find in Finland—Ivan Sergeievitch. He was well disguised as a soldier, with worn-out boots and shabby cap. I followed him in uncertainty, passing and repassing him two or three times to make sure. But a scar on his cheek left no further doubt. So, waiting until he was close to the gate of the garden on the west side of the Winter Palace, the wall of which with the imperial monograms was being removed, I stepped up behind him.