As on the occasion of my first visit to this interesting personage, I became so engrossed in subjects he introduced that I completely forgot Melnikoff, although the latter had been uppermost in my thoughts since I successfully landed Mrs. Marsh in Finland. Nor did the subject recur to mind until Zorinsky himself broached it.
“Well, I have lots of news for you,” he said as we moved into the drawing-room for coffee. “In the first place, Vera Alexandrovna’s café is rounded up and she’s under lock and key.”
He imparted this information in an indifferent tone.
“Are you not sorry for Vera Alexandrovna?” I said.
“Sorry? Why should one be? She was a nice girl, but foolish to keep a place like that, with all those stupid old fogeys babbling aloud like chatterboxes. It was bound to be found out.”
I recalled that this was exactly what I had thought about the place myself.
“What induced you to frequent it?” I asked.
“Oh, just for company,” he replied. “Sometimes one found someone to talk to. Lucky I was not there. The Bolsheviks got quite a haul, I am told, something like twenty people. I just happened to miss, and should have walked right into the trap next day had I not chanced to find out just in time.”
My misgivings, then, regarding Vera’s secret café had been correct, and I was thankful I had fought shy of the place after my one visit. But I felt very sorry for poor Vera Alexandrovna. I was still thinking of her when Zorinsky thrust a big blue sheet of oil paper into my hands.
“What do you think of that?” he asked.