“I should think that anything which could explain the circumstances of
that midnight arrest....”
“Reported by a journalist for the amusement of the civilized Europe,” he
broke in scornfully.
“Yes, reported.... But aren’t they true? I can’t make out your
attitude in this? Either the man is a hero to you, or...”
He approached his face with fiercely distended nostrils close to mine so
suddenly that I had the greatest difficulty in not starting back.
“You ask me! I suppose it amuses you, all this. Look here! I am a
worker. I studied. Yes, I studied very hard. There is intelligence
here.” (He tapped his forehead with his finger-tips.) “Don’t you think a
Russian may have sane ambitions? Yes--I had even prospects. Certainly! I
had. And now you see me here, abroad, everything gone, lost, sacrificed.
You see me here--and you ask! You see me, don’t you?--sitting before
you.”
He threw himself back violently. I kept outwardly calm.
“Yes, I see you here; and I assume you are here on account of the Haldin
affair?”
His manner changed.
“You call it the Haldin affair--do you?” he observed indifferently.
“I have no right to ask you anything,” I said. “I wouldn’t presume. But
in that case the mother and the sister of him who must be a hero in
your eyes cannot be indifferent to you. The girl is a frank and generous
creature, having the noblest--well--illusions. You will tell her
nothing--or you will tell her everything. But speaking now of the object
with which I’ve approached you first, we have to deal with the morbid
state of the mother. Perhaps something could be invented under your
authority as a cure for a distracted and suffering soul filled with
maternal affection.”
His air of weary indifference was accentuated, I could not help
thinking, wilfully.
“Oh yes. Something might,” he mumbled carelessly.
He put his hand over his mouth to conceal a yawn. When he uncovered his
lips they were smiling faintly.
“Pardon me. This has been a long conversation, and I have not had much
sleep the last two nights.”
This unexpected, somewhat insolent sort of apology had the merit of
being perfectly true. He had had no nightly rest to speak of since that
day when, in the grounds of the Chateau Borel, the sister of Victor
Haldin had appeared before him. The perplexities and the complex
terrors--I may say--of this sleeplessness are recorded in the document
I was to see later--the document which is the main source of this
narrative. At the moment he looked to me convincingly tired, gone slack
all over, like a man who has passed through some sort of crisis.
“I have had a lot of urgent writing to do,” he added.
I rose from my chair at once, and he followed my example, without haste,
a little heavily.
“I must apologize for detaining you so long,” I said.
“Why apologize? One can’t very well go to bed before night. And you did
not detain me. I could have left you at any time.”