A secret-service man escorted each of us, and we walked down the corridor, past the squad of soldiers with their bayonets, and into the salon, where we were delivered into the hands of two women spies. They undressed us, and we waited while our clothes were passed out to the secret-service men outside. Panna Lolla tried to twist herself up in the window curtains. Marie and I grew hysterical at her modesty, looking at her big, knobby feet and her fiery face, with her top-knot of disheveled red hair. We were given our clothes again, and went back to our apartment.
The rooms were in confusion. All our trunks and bags were emptied, one end of the carpet rolled back, the mattresses torn from the beds. The secret-service men were down on their knees before piles of clothes, going over the seams, emptying the pockets, unfolding handkerchiefs, tapping the heels of shoes; every scrap of paper was passed over to the chief, who tucked it into his portfolio. I watched him, hating his square, stolid body that filled out his uniform smoothly. His eyes were long and watchful like a cat's, and his fair mustache was turned up at the ends, German fashion; in fact, there was something very German about his thick thighs and shaved head and official importance. As I have learned since, he is a German and the most hated man in Kiev for his pitiless persecution of all political offenders. They say he has sent more people to Siberia than any six of his predecessors. They also say every hand is against him, even to the spies' in his own force.
I trembled to spring at him and claw him and ruffle his composure some way. Instead, I sat quietly, my hands folded, and watched the spies ransacking our clothes. I began to feel a sharp anxiety as to what they would find. It was all so mysterious. What were they looking for? At one moment it was ridiculous, and I felt like laughing at the whole affair; and then the next, the silence in which the search was conducted, the apparent dead-seriousness of the spies' faces, the deliberation with which the chief turned the bits of paper over in his hands and scrutinized them and put them carefully away, struck me with a cold, sharp apprehension. I had the sensation of being on the very edge of a precipice. I felt as though the world were upside down and the most innocent thing could be turned against us. Every card and photograph I tried to catch a glimpse of before it went into the black portfolio. And suddenly I saw the letter about the Jewish detention camp, which I had forgotten all about. I saw the close lines of my writing, and it seemed as though the edge of the precipice crumbled and I went shooting down. A cold sweat broke out over me.
"But why are we arrested?" I heard Marie ask in German.
"Espionage," the chief answered shortly.
"But that is ridiculous. We're American citizens."
No reply.
"Can we leave for Odessa to-night?"
No reply.
Marie stopped her questions.