“Why? Was he quite alone?”
“Yes, Excellency. He made me hurry, driving night and day sometimes, for he was overtaking a friend.”
“What friend?”
“Ah! I do not know. Only at each stancia, or povarnia, he inquired if an Englishman had passed. Therefore I concluded that it was an Englishman he was following.”
Petrakoff, hearing the man’s words, looked meaningly towards me.
“He was alone, you say?” I inquired. “Had he any friends in Krasnoyarsk, do you know?”
“None that I know of. He had journeyed all the way from Petersburg, and he paid me well, because he was travelling so rapidly. We heard of the Englishman at a number of stancias, and have gradually overtaken him, until we found, on arrival here, that the friend he sought had only come in an hour before us. I heard the post-house keeper tell him so.”
“Then he was following this mysterious Englishman—eh?” asked the chief of police, who had seated himself at his table with some officiousness before commencing the inquiry.
“No doubt he was, Excellency. One day he told me that if he did not overtake the Englishman on his way to Yakutsk, he would remain and wait for his return.”
Then I took a couple of steps forward to the official’s table and said: