“Then I suggest you come home with me and we will talk it over. I live quite near.”
Anxious to learn of any possibility of saving Melnikoff, I consented. We passed into Troitzkaya Street and entered a large house on the right.
“How do you wish me to call you?” asked Zorinsky as we mounted the staircase. I was struck by the considerateness of his question and replied, “Pavel Ivanitch.”
The flat in which Zorinsky lived was large and luxuriously furnished, and showed no signs of molestation. “You live comfortably,” I remarked, sinking into a deep leather arm-chair. “Yes, we do pretty well,” he replied. “My wife, you see, is an actress. She receives as many provisions as she wants and our flat is immune from requisition of furniture or the obtrusion of workmen. We will go round some evening, if you like, and see her dance. As for me, my wife has registered me as a sub-manager of the theatre, so that I receive additional rations also. These things, you know, are not difficult to arrange! Thus I am really a gentleman at large, and living like many others at the expense of a generous proletarian régime. My hobby,” he added, idly, “is contre-espionnage.”
“What?” I cried, the exclamation escaping me inadvertently.
“Contre-espionnage,” he repeated, smiling. When he smiled one end of his crooked mouth remained stationary, while the other seemed to jut right up into his cheek. “Why should you be surprised? Tout le monde est contre-révolutionnaire: it is merely a question of whether one is actively or passively so.” He took from a drawer a typewritten sheet of paper and handed it to me. “Does that by any chance interest you?”
I glanced at the paper. The writing was full of uncorrected orthographical errors, showing it had been typed by an unpractised hand in extreme haste. Scanning the first few lines I at once became completely absorbed in the document. It was a report, dated two days previously, of confidential negotiations between the Bolshevist Government and the leaders of non-Bolshevist parties with regard to the possible formation of a coalition Government. Nothing came of the negotiations, but the information was of great importance as showing the nervousness of the Bolshevist leaders at that time and the clearly defined attitude of the Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevist parties toward the military counter-revolution.
“Is it authentic?” I inquired, dubiously.
“That report,” replied Zorinsky, “is at this moment being considered by the central committee of the Menshevist party in this city. It was drawn up by a member of the Menshevist delegation and despatched secretly to Petrograd, for the Bolsheviks do not permit their opponents to communicate freely with each other. I saw the original and obtained a copy two hours before it reached the Menshevist committee.”
The suspicion of forgery immediately arose, but I could see no reason for concocting the document on the off-chance of somebody’s being taken in by it. I handed it back.