Part 32 (1/2)
”Well,” he replied, ”I happen to have rather good reason to know him.
In Odessa he was chief of a desperate gang of bank-note forgers, who, after eluding us for two years, were at last arrested--six of them in Moscow. The seventh, who called himself Muller, escaped to Germany. A year ago he was bold enough to return to Petersburg, where I recognised him one day close to the Nicholas station and followed him to the house where he lodged. I entered there alone, very foolishly perhaps, whereupon he drew a revolver and fired point-blank at me. The bullet struck me in the right shoulder, but a.s.sistance was forthcoming, and he was arrested. His sentence about eleven months ago was confinement in the Fortress of Peter and Paul for fifteen years. So he must have escaped. Ah! he was one of the most daring, astute and desperate criminals in all Russia. At his trial he spat at the judge, and contemptuously declared that his friends would not allow him to be confined for very long.”
”It seems that they have not,” I remarked thoughtfully. ”The fact of his having dared to break into the house of the chief of police shows in itself the character of the man,” Petrakoff exclaimed. ”I myself had a most narrow escape when I arrested him. But what was he doing here--in Siberia?”
”He may have been exiled here and escaped,” remarked the chief of police, as we were returning to the bureau at the side of the house.
”I hardly think that, Excellency,” interrupted a Cossack sergeant, who had just returned from the post-station, where he had been making inquiries. ”We have just arrested a yams.h.i.+ck, who arrived with the a.s.sa.s.sin an hour after midnight. Here he is.”
A moment later a big, red-faced, s.h.a.ggy, vodka-drinking driver in ragged furs was brought into the bureau between two Cossacks, and at once interrogated by the chief of police.
First he was taken out to view the body still lying in the snow; then brought back into the police office, a bare, wooden room, lit by a single petroleum lamp, and bearing on its walls posters of numbers of official regulations, each headed by the big black double eagle.
”Now,” asked the chief of police, a.s.suming an air of great severity, ”where do you come from?”
”Krasnoyarsk, Excellency,” answered the man gruffly.
”What do you know of the individual you have just seen dead--eh?”
”All I know of him, Excellency, is that he contracted with me to drive him to Yakutsk.”
”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 pa.s.sed. 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:
”I fear that I must be the Englishman whom this mysterious person has followed in such hot haste for nearly six thousand miles.”
”So it seems. But why?” asked the chief of police. ”I can see no reason why that escaped criminal should follow you with such sinister intent. You don't know him?”
”Not in the least. I have never even heard his name before.”
”He was well supplied with money, it seems,” remarked my host. ”This wallet found upon him contains over ten thousand roubles in notes, together with a credit upon the branch of the National Bank in Yakutsk for a further thirty thousand.” And he showed me a well-worn leather pocket-book, evidently of German manufacture.
Both Petrakoff and myself knew only too well that this daring criminal had been released from that cold citadel in the Nevi and given money, promised a free pardon in all probability, if he followed me and at all hazards prevented me from obtaining an interview with the poor, innocent, suffering woman whose dastardly enemy had marked her ”dangerous.”