“Enough for myself, but no reserve.”
“I will leave you all I have,” he said, “and to-day I’ll go and see a business friend of mine who may be able to get some more. He is a Jew, but is absolutely trustworthy.”
“By the way,” I asked, when this matter was decided, “ever heard of a Captain Zorinsky?”
“Zorinsky? Zorinsky? No. Who is he?”
“A fellow who seems to know a lot about you,” I said. “Says he is a friend of Melnikoff’s, though I never heard Melnikoff mention him. Yesterday he was particularly anxious to know your present address.”
“You didn’t tell him?” queried Marsh, nervously.
“What do you take me for?”
“You can tell him day after to-morrow,” he laughed.
Marsh went off to his business friend, saying he would warn him of my possible visit, and stayed there all day. I remained at “No. 5” and wrote up in minute handwriting on tracing paper a preliminary report on the general situation in Petrograd, which I intended to ask Marsh to take with him. To be prepared for all contingencies I gave the little scroll to Maria when it was finished and she hid it at the bottom of a pail of ashes.
Next morning Marsh turned up at “No. 5” dressed in a huge sheepskin coat with a fur collar half engulfing his face. This was the disguise in which he was going to escape across the frontier. As passport he had procured the “certificate of identification” of his coachman, who had come into Petrograd from the expropriated farm to see Maria. With his face purposely dirtied, and decorated with three days’ growth of reddish beard, a driver’s cap that covered his ears, and a big sack on his back to add a peasant touch to his get-up, Marsh looked—well, like nothing on earth, to use the colloquial expression! It was a get-up that defied description, yet in a crowd of peasants would not attract particular attention.