“You’d better have a yarn with our Doctor Weekes,” he said. “What he doesn’t know about bugs, typhus, dysentery, plague, and dirt, needn’t worry you in this country. He’ll tell you how to skip between the bad bacilli. It’s worth while.”
He shook hands with Bertram, and closed the interview. It was good enough. Bertram need no longer worry about Mr. Weinstein and the Soviet Foreign Office. Under the wings of “Ara” he would be carried to the Volga and find out the truth about the Famine.
In the Trubnaya market a Russian girl spoke to him in English. He recognised her as the girl who had flamed scarlet when he looked at her in the line of barterers, and afterwards looked into his eyes.
“You spoke to my mother the other day,” she said. “She was afraid because a man was watching. Now she is a little ill, but would be most glad if you would have the kindness to call on her. It is long since she has spoken to an English gentleman.”
Bertram said he would be glad to call. This girl’s face, with her dark eyes and looped hair, would make it interesting. In any case, he was in Russia to learn the inside of life, if he could get so close. Here was a chance of knowledge.
“How shall I find your mother?” he asked.
“It is difficult,” she said, smiling in a friendly way. “We do not live in the big house that was ours. But if you will meet me at any time you say, at the corner of the Arbat, where the houses were burnt down, I will take you to our home. Perhaps after dusk would be safest.”
“At seven o’clock, or eight, if you like,” said Bertram.
“At seven, then. My mother used to be Princess Alexandra, in the old days. My father was Prince Alexander Suvaroff. Perhaps you remember him at the Embassy in Paris? Now he is very old and weak, and broken.”
“And your name?” asked Bertram.