FREEMAN EXPLAINS
The next I knew I was in bed, in a cool, darkened room, with a man
seated in an easy-chair near at hand, smoking a cigarette, and reading
what looked remarkably like an English newspaper.
I lay and looked at him lazily, for a few minutes. I hadn't the least
idea as to where I was, or how I came there; I didn't feel any curiosity
on the point. The blissful consciousness of cleanliness and comfort was
quite sufficient for me at present. My broken arm had been set and put
in rude splints while I was in the prison, by one of my fellow
sufferers, I expect, and was now scientifically cased in plaster of
Paris; the bullet wounds in my right arm and side were properly dressed
and strapped, and felt pretty comfortable till I tried to shift my
position a little, when I realized they were there.
At the slight movement the man in the chair laid down his paper and came
up to the bed.
"Hello, Mr. Wynn; feel a bit more like yourself, eh?" he asked bluffly,
in English.
"Why, yes, I feel just about 'O. K.,' thanks," I responded, and laughed
inanely. My voice sounded funny--thin and squeaky--and it jumped from
one note to another. I hadn't the least control over it. "Say, where am
I, and who are you? I guess you've done me a good turn!"
"Humph, I suppose we have. Good Lord, think of an Englishman--you're an
American, but it's all the same in this case--being treated like that by
these Russian swine! You're still in St. Petersburg; we've got to patch
you up a bit before we can take you back to good old England."
Now why should he, or any one else, be "taking me back to England?" I
puzzled over it in silence before I put the question.
"Never you mind about that now," he said with brusque kindliness. "All
you've got to think about is getting strong again."
But already I began to remember, and past events came jumping before my
mind like cinematograph pictures.
"You fetched me out of prison,--you and Inspector Freeman," I said
slowly.
"Look here, don't you worry," he began.
"Yes, I must--I want to get things clear; wait a bit. He said something.
I know; he came to arrest me for murder,--the murder of Cassavetti."
"Just so; and a jolly good thing for you he did! But, as you've
remembered that much, I must warn you that I'm a detective in charge of
you, and anything you say will be used against you."
More cinematograph pictures,--Cassavetti as I saw him, lying behind the
door, his eyes open, staring; myself on the steps below Westminster
Bridge, calling to Anne, as she sat in the boat. Anne! No more pictures,
but a jiggery of red and black splashes, and then a darkness, through
which I passed somehow into a pleasant place,--a garden where roses
bloomed and a fountain plashed, and Anne was beside me; I held her hand
in mine.
Now she was gone, she had vanished mysteriously. What was that man
saying? "The Fraulein has not been here at all!" Why, she was here a
moment ago; what a fool that waiter was! A waiter? No, he was a droshky
driver; I knew it, though I could not see him. There were other voices
speaking now,--men's voices,--subdued but distinct; and as I listened I
came back from the land of dreams--or delirium--to that of reality.
"Yes, he's been pretty bad, sir. He came to himself quite nicely, and
began to talk. No, I didn't tell him anything, as you said I wasn't to,
but he remembered by himself, and then I had to warn him, and he went
right off again."
"You're an ass, Harris," said another voice. "What did you want to speak
to him at all for?"
I opened my eyes at that, and saw Freeman and the other man looking down
at me.
"He isn't an ass; he's a real good sort," I announced. "And I didn't
murder Cassavetti, though I'd have murdered half a dozen Cassavettis to
get out of that hell upon earth yonder!"
I shut my eyes again, settled myself luxuriously against my pillows, and
went,--back to Anne and the rose-garden.
I suppose I began to pull round from that time, and in a few days I was
able to get up. I almost forgot that I was still in custody, and even
when I remembered the fact, it didn't trouble me in the least. After
what I had endured in the Russian prison, it was impossible, at present,
anyhow, to consider Detective-Inspector Freeman and his subordinate,
Harris, as anything less than the best of good fellows and good nurses.
True, they never left me to myself for an instant; one or other of them
was always in close attendance on me; but there was nothing of espionage
in that attendance. They merely safe-guarded me, and, at the same time,
helped me back to life, as if I had been their comrade rather than their
prisoner. Freeman, in due course, gave me his formal warning that
"anything I said with respect to the crime with which I was charged
would be used against me;" but in all other respects both he and Harris
acted punctiliously on the principle held by only two civilized nations
in the world,--England and the United States of America,--that "a man is
regarded as innocent in the eyes of the law until he has been tried and
found guilty."
"Well, how goes it to-day?" Freeman asked, as he relieved his lieutenant
one morning. "You look a sight better than you did. D'you think you can
stand the journey? We don't want you to die on our hands _en route_, you
know!"
"We'll start to-day if you like; I'm fit enough," I answered. "Let's get
back and get it over. It's a preposterous charge, you know; but--"
"We needn't discuss that, Mr. Wynn," he interrupted hastily.
"All right; we won't. Though I fancy I shouldn't have been alive at this
time if you hadn't taken it into your heads to hunt me down as the
murderer of a man who wasn't even a naturalized Englishman. You came
just in the nick of time, Mr. Freeman."
"Well, yes, I think we did that," he conceded. "You were the most
deplorable object I've ever seen in the course of my experience,--and
that's fairly long and varied. I'd like to know how you got into their
clutches; though you needn't say if it has any connection with--"
"Why, certainly. It's nothing to do with Cassavetti, or Selinski, or
whatever his name was," I said.
"I got wind of a Nihilist meeting in the woods, went there out of
curiosity; and the soldiers turned up. There was a free fight; they got
the best of it, took me prisoner with the others, and that's all. But
how did you trace me? How long had you been in Petersburg?"
"Only a couple of days. Found you had disappeared and the Embassies were
raising Cain. It seemed likely you'd been murdered, as Carson was. The
police declared they were making every effort to trace you, without
success; and I doubt if they would have produced you, even in response
to the extradition warrant, but that some one mysteriously telephoned
information to the American Embassy that you were in prison--in the
fortress--and even gave your number; though he would not give his own
name or say where he was speaking from."
Who was it, I wondered,--Loris or Mirakoff? It must have been one or the
other. He had saved my life, anyhow.
"So acting on that, we simply went and demanded you; and good heavens,
what a sight you were! I thought you'd die in the droshky that we
brought you here in. I couldn't help telling the officer who handed you
over that I couldn't congratulate him on his prison system; and he
grinned and said:
"'Ah, I have heard that you English treat your prisoners as honored
guests. We prefer our own methods.'"