THE RIVERSIDE MEETING
The Nihilists were not long in taking up my challenge; and on the
following afternoon, the man whom I had interviewed in my rooms met me
in the street and told me I was to meet him on the south side of the
Cathedral Square at nine o'clock the next night. There was a
peremptory ring in the message which I didn't care for, but I promised
to keep the appointment.
I had thought out my plans and had come to see that the impulse under
which I had spoken was as shrewd as the proposal itself was risky. If
I was not to be a perpetual mark for their attacks, I must make an
impression on them; and I saw at once that the safest thing that could
happen was at the same time the most daring--I must take the lead. If
some desperate scheme were placed in my hands for execution, I should
certainly be allowed a free hand to carry it out, and as certainly have
time in which to do it. That was what I needed.
I did not place the danger of attending the meeting very high. If I
were not murdered on my way to the place, wherever it might be--and
that was highly improbable--I did not think they would venture to kill
me at the meeting itself. Moreover I reckoned somewhat on the effect I
believed I had created on the man in my rooms.
I took a revolver with me as a precaution; but I had little doubt about
getting through the night safely.
It turned out to be a very different affair from anything I had
anticipated, however, and taken on the whole it was perhaps one of the
most thrilling experiences I have ever passed through. Whether I was
really in danger of death at any time, or whether the whole business
was merely intended to try and scare me, I don't know. But I believe
that if I had shewn any signs of fear, they would have murdered me
there and then. Certainly they had all the means at hand.
I met the man by the Cathedral, and muttering to me to follow him at
twenty paces distance, he walked on and presently plunged into a
labyrinth of streets, leading from the Cathedral down to the river in
the lowest quarter of the town. The place was ill lit and worse
drained, and the noisome atmosphere of some of the alleys which we
passed and the mess through which we trudged, were horribly repulsive.
In the lowest and darkest and dirtiest of the streets the man stopped
and with a sign to me not to speak, pointed to a dark tumbling doorway.
As I entered it, I saw it was about the aptest scene for a murder that
could have been chosen.
The place was almost pitch dark, and as we had stepped out of a very
bright moonlight, I had to stand a moment to let my eyes accustom
themselves to the change. Then I made out a broken, rambling stairway
just ahead of us. Taking it for granted that I was to go up these,
ignorant whether I was supposed to know the place, and quite unwilling
even to appear to wish to hang back, I stumbled up the stairs as
quickly as the gloom would let me. When I reached the top I found
myself in a long, low shed that ran on some distance in front of me to
a point there I thought I could discern a faint light.
I groped my way forward, the boards giving ominously under my feet,
when suddenly a voice said in a loud whisper out of the gloom and as if
at my very ear:--
"Stand, if you value your life."
I stopped readily enough, as may be imagined; and then the silence was
broken by the swishing, rushing swirl of the swiftly flowing river,
while currents of cold air caused by the moving water, were wafted up
full in my face. I strained my ears to listen and my eyes to see and
craning forward, I could make out a huge gap in the floor wider than a
man could have leapt, which opened right to my very feet.
What happened I don't know; it was too dark to see. But after a time
there was a sound of a heavily moving body close at my feet, the noise
of the water grew faint, and I was told to go forward. I went on until
I was again called to a halt; and after a minute the sound of the
rushing water came again clear and distinct, this time from behind me.
Then a flaring light was kindled all suddenly and thrown down into the
wide gap until with a hiss it was extinguished in the river below.
I knew what that meant. It was a signal that all hope of retreat was
cut off, and the signal was given in this dramatic fashion to frighten
me if my nerves should be unsteady. As a matter of fact it had rather
the opposite effect. I have generally found that when men are really
dangerous they are least demonstrative. These things--the darkness,
the silence, the rushing water, the means of secret murder--were all
calculated to frighten weak nerves no doubt, but they did not frighten
me.
At the same time I saw that if the men wished to murder me, they had
ample means of doing it safely, and that the situation might easily
become a very ugly one.
Without wasting time I went forward again, and passing through a door
which was opened at my approach, I found myself in the end room of a
disused and tumbling riverside warehouse; the side next the river being
quite open and over-hanging the waters. The place was unlighted save
for the bright moonlight which came slanting in from the open end, and
down through some chinks and gaps in the roof.
Scattered round the place were some thirty or forty men, their faces
undistinguishable in the gloom, though care was taken to let me see
that each man carried a knife: and when I entered, five or six of them
closed round the door, as if to guard against the possibility of my
retreat.
I glanced about me to see whom to address, or who would speak to me.
For a couple of minutes or more, not a soul moved and not a word was
spoken. The only sounds audible were these which came from the river
without; the hushed burr of night life from the dim city beyond.
"You plea has been considered," said a voice at length in a tone
scarcely above a whisper; but I thought I could recognise it as that of
the man who had been in my rooms. "It has been resolved not to accept
it. You have been brought here to-night to die."
"As you will; I am ready," I answered promptly. "I am as ready to lose
my life as you are to take it."
"Kneel down," said the man.
"Not I," I cried, resolutely. "If I am to die, I prefer to stand. But
here, I'll make it easier for you. Here's the only weapon I have.
Take it, someone." I laid my revolver on the floor in a little spot
where a glint of moonlight fell on it. Then I threw off my coat and
waistcoat and turning back my shirt bared the heart side of my breast.
If they could be dramatic, so could I, I thought. "Here, strike," I
cried. "And all I ask is for a clean quick thrust right to the heart."
I was growing excited.
[Illustration: "Here, strike," I cried.]
"No 13," said the man, after a long pause.
A tall, broad, huge man loomed up out of a dark corner and stood
between me and the light from the river. As he laid his hands on me,
the clasp was like a clamp of iron, and his enormous strength made me
as a child in his clutch.
With a trick that seemed to tell of much practice, he seized me
suddenly by the right arm, holding it in a grip I thought no man on
earth could possess, and bending me backwards held me so that either my
throat or my heart were at the mercy of the long knife he held aloft.
I let no sound escape me and did not move a muscle. The next instant
my left hand was seized and a finger pressed on my pulse. In this
position I stayed for a full minute. I do not believe that my pulse
quickened, save for the physical strain, by so much as one beat.
"It is enough," said the man who had before spoken; and I was released.
"You are no coward," he said, addressing me. "I withdraw that. You
can have your life, on one condition."
"And that?"
"That you swear..."
"I will swear nothing," I interposed.
"You have taken the oath of fealty."
"I will swear nothing. Take my life if you like, but swear I will not.
If I had meant treachery, I should have had the police round us
to-night like a swarm of bees. You have had a proof whether I'm true
or not; and when I turn traitor, you can run a blade into my heart or
lodge a bullet in my brain. But oaths are nothing to a man who means
either to keep or break his word. What is the condition? I told you
mine before."
"Yours is accepted. Your task is"--here he sunk his voice and
whispered right into my ear--"the death of Christian Tueski."
"I accept," I answered readily. I would have accepted, had they told
me to kill the Czar himself. "But it will take time. I will have no
other hand in it than mine. It is a glorious commission. Mine alone
the honour of success, and mine alone the danger, or mine alone the
disgrace of failure." I looked on the whole thing now as more or less
of a burlesque; but I played the part I had chosen as well as I could.
And when the little puny rebel put out his hand in the darkness and
clasped mine, I gripped his with a force that made his bones crack, as
if to convey to him the intensity of my resolve and my enthusiastic
pleasure at the grim work they had allotted me.
Then I was told to leave; and in a few minutes I was once more in the
open air, quite as undecided then as I have always remained, as to what
had been the real intentions in regard to myself. One of my chief
regrets was not to be able to see the burly giant who had twisted me
about on his knee as easily as I should a fowl whose neck I meant to
wring. He was a man indeed to admire; and I would have given much for
a sight of him.
But my guide hurried me back through the labyrinth of streets into
respectable Moscow once more, and I was soon busy with my thoughts as
to how long a shrift I should have before my new "comrades" would grow
impatient for me to act.
Certainly they would have plenty of time for their patience to grow
very cold before I should turn murderer to further their schemes. But
I could not foresee the strange chain of events which was fated to
fasten on me this new character that I had assumed so lightly and
dramatically--the character of a desperate, bloodthirsty, and
absolutely reckless Nihilist.