“Yes. You would open your eyes if you knew some of the people I’ve guided over this very path. Sometimes it is a Jew peasant who has no permit, and desires to emigrate to London, or to America; at others, an escaped prisoner, a murderer, or a revolutionist, who is being tracked down by the Security Section. We always know why they are leaving Russia, and make them pay accordingly. Not long ago I brought a young titled lady across here; accompanied her into Germany, and put her into the train for Berlin. We had a narrow shave of being captured, but she gave me a thousand roubles when we parted.”
“Why did she want to leave secretly?” I asked.
“She had poisoned her husband somewhere down in Minsk, and the police were in search of her,” he laughed. “Never a night passes, but one or other of us cross the frontier.”
“And you find it an adventurous game—eh?”
“Well, it is pleasant after ten years of Siberia,” he answered grimly. “I let loose the red rooster and burned down the barin’s house in a village in Tver. He well deserved it. I and two friends got away with his money and jewels to Moscow, but one night, a week later, I had an appointment to meet my companions opposite the fountain in the Lubyansky Square, and was arrested.”
“And you got ten years?”
“They made out that the barin got burned to death, so I was packed off for life to Kara. After ten years I managed to escape and become a ‘cuckoo.’ Then after a year’s wandering I succeeded in returning to Moscow, where I found one or two old friends, and we started together in this business. We don’t intend to fall into the drag-net of the police again,” he added with a sardonic grin, at the same moment drawing from his trousers pocket a big army revolver.
“Do the frontier-guards ever trouble you?”
“Sometimes,” he laughed. “When we meet we always show fight. Three were killed in a brush with some of our party not long ago. It will teach them not to interfere with us for a little time.”
Long ago I had heard of a gang of desperate characters who made the strip of zealously-guarded territory between Germany and Russia a terror to travellers, and the utter loneliness of the dismal place, and the swaggering demeanour of my evil-faced companion increased my mistrust.