He passed out of the room, and his quick, firm footsteps were heard descending the stairs.
Sandoff turned to Poussin, who was seated on a chair, fumbling with his cap.
“Follow me. I have something to say to you,” he commanded.
He passed into the front room with Poussin at his heels, and, stopping before a ponderous iron chest in one corner, unlocked and opened the lid. He took out a roll of bank notes—a portion of his private fortune, received that morning from his bankers—and, approaching the table, counted out six thousand rubles in full view of Poussin, who watched the operation with sparkling eyes. Then he passed them into the fellow’s hand.
“Here is the reward for your information, and an extra thousand besides,” he said. “Put the money away, and say nothing to any one of what has occurred tonight. Do you understand? You must keep the information about Shamarin strictly to yourself. If you disobey me you will probably lose your money and your life, too. Stay, you had better not return to your home tonight. Go to some other quarter of the city. That is all. Remember my warning!”
Poussin stuffed the bank notes into his pocket with a trembling hand. His eyes were fairly bulging from their sockets at the unprecedented sight of so much money. He would have fallen at the feet of his benefactor, but Sandoff’s manner forbade any such demonstration.
The latter was tempted for an instant to ask the fellow if Zamosc had remained in the back room with him all the time, but a second later he changed his mind. He had implicit faith in his agent, and felt ashamed of the momentary suspicion that had crossed his mind. He opened the door, and Poussin shuffled out, half crazy with joy, and went slowly through the hall and down the stairs.
Sandoff paced the floor a couple of times, and then, drawing his chair up to the lamp that was burning cheerily on his desk, he lit a fresh cigar and picked up one of the evening papers. The clock unceasingly ticked off the minutes, and the street without, at first enlivened by the occasional tread of a passer by, soon became entirely deserted.
On this same evening, and while Victor Sandoff was reading the St. Petersburg papers at the headquarters of the Third Section, his uncle, Count Sandoff, was engaged in a similar occupation in his luxuriously furnished library of his stately residence on the Court Quay. A touch of gout had confined him to the house, and his right leg was propped on a couch surrounded by soft pillows. Consequently he was in an unusually vile temper, and this frame of mind was aggravated by the merry and continuous tinkle of bells from the sleighs that were speeding swiftly over the ice covered waters of the Neva, and along the frozen surface of the Quay.