“Your predecessors, if you will allow me to say so,” he launched forth on the occasion of my first visit, “were pitifully incompetent. Even Mr. Marsh, delightful man though he was, hardly knew his business. Now you, Michael Ivanitch, I can see, are a man of understanding—a man of quite different stamp. I presented a scheme to Marsh, for instance,” and he bent over confidentially, “for dividing Petrograd into ten sections, seizing each one in turn, and thus throwing the Bolsheviks out. It was sure of success, and yet Mr. Marsh would not hear of it.”
“How were you going to do it?”
He seized a sheet of paper and began hastily making sketches to illustrate his wonderful scheme. The capital was all neatly divided up, the chiefs of each district were appointed to their respective posts, he had the whole police force at his beck and call and about half-a-dozen regiments.
“Give but the signal,” he cried, dramatically, “and this city of Peter the Great is ours.”
“And the supreme commander?” I queried. “Who will be governor of the liberated city?”
The sanguine little Policeman smiled a trifle confusedly. “Oh, we will find a governor,” he said, rather sheepishly, hesitant to utter the innermost hopes of his heart. “Perhaps you, Michael Ivanitch——”
But this magnanimous offer was mere formal courtesy. It was plain that I was expected to content myself with the secondary rôle of king-maker.
“Well, if all is so far ready,” I said, “why don’t you blow the trumpets and we will watch the walls of Jericho fall?”
The little man twirled his moustache, smirking apologetically. “But, Michael Ivanitch,” he said, growing bold and bordering even on familiarity, “er—funds, don’t you know—after all, nowadays, you know, you get nowhere without—er—money, do you? Of course, you quite understand, Michael Ivanitch, that I, personally——”
“How much did you tell Marsh it would cost?” I interrupted, very curious to see what he would say. He had not expected the question to be put in this way. Like a clock ticking I could hear his mind calculating the probability of Marsh’s having told me the sum, and whether he might safely double it in view of my greater susceptibility.