“‘You’ll see.’
“‘But why, for mercy’s sake? What about?’
“‘You’ll know when you get there.’
“My apothecary began blustering at them in his tipsy way; but they only told him, ‘It’ll be the worse for you; you’d better come quietly.’ So there was nothing for it; he had to dress and go. He thought he’d best hide those pills before he started; but they asked him—
“‘What’s that parcel?’
“‘That?’ says he; oh, that’s nothing!’
“They saw he wanted to hide something from them, and caught hold of the parcel; but he was afraid to let them have it. Supposing any one should analyze the pills!... There was poison in them, and his name was written on the box. ‘And I was afraid,’ he told me afterwards, ‘to leave them in the lodgings either. Supposing anybody should take a fancy to them and swallow them, there’d be the devil to pay then!’ So he tried to hide the box up his sleeve; but they didn’t give him the chance. The end of it was that one of his visitors hit him on the shoulder, and the box tumbled out of his sleeve; and they picked it up, and marched him away. They took him to their central office; and in less than half-an-hour’s time some one came up to him, asked his name, bundled him into a troika,[[55]] and—off!”
“What a disgraceful business! How could such a thing happen?” exclaimed one of the officers. “It must have been some absurd mistake.”
“Of course it was a mistake! Things like that always are mistakes. But who it was that made the mistake, that we don’t know to this day.”
“But no doubt it was afterwards proved to have been all nonsense.”