“Better be moving along now,” he said when we had finished tea. “I’ll go ahead because we mustn’t walk together. Follow me in about five minutes, and you’ll find me standing by the hoarding round the Kazan Cathedral.”
“The hoarding round the Kazan Cathedral? So you know that hoarding, too?” I asked, recalling my intention of hiding in that very place.
“I certainly do,” he exclaimed. “Spent the first night there after my escape. Now I’ll be off. When you see me shoot off from the hoarding follow me as far behind as you can. So long.”
“By the way,” I said, as he went out, “that hoarding—it doesn’t happen to be a regular shelter for—for homeless and destitute Englishmen or others, does it?”
“Not that I know of,” he laughed. “Why?”
“Oh, nothing. I only wondered.”
I let Marsh out and heard his steps reechoing down the stone staircase.
“I shall not be back tonight, Stepanovna,” I said, preparing to follow him. “I can’t tell you how grateful—”
“Oh, but, Ivan Pavlovitch,” exclaimed the good woman, “you can come here any time you like. If anything happens,” she added in a lower tone, “we’ll say you belong to us. No one need know.”
“Well, well,” I said, “but not tonight. Goodbye, goodbye.” While Stepanovna and Varia let me out I had a vision of Dmitri standing at the kitchen door, stolidly munching a crust of black bread.
Outside the hoarding of the Kazan Cathedral I espied the huge figure of Marsh sitting on a stone. When he saw me over the way he rose and slouched along with his collar turned up, diving into side streets and avoiding the main thoroughfares. I followed at a distance. Eventually we came out on to the Siennaya market, crossed it, and plunged into the maze of streets to the south. Marsh disappeared under an arch and, following his steps, I found myself in a dark, filthy, reeking yard with a backstair entrance on either hand. Marsh stood at the stairway on the left. “Flat No. 5 on the second floor,” he said. “We can go up together.”
The stairway was narrow and littered with rubbish. At a door with “5” chalked on it Marsh banged loudly three times with his fist, and it was opened by a woman dressed plainly in black, who greeted Marsh with exclamations of welcome and relief.
“Aha, Maria,” he shouted boisterously, “here we are, you see—not got me yet. And won’t get me, unless I’ve got a pumpkin on my shoulders instead of a head!”
Maria was his housekeeper. She looked questioningly at me, obviously doubtful whether I ought to be admitted. Marsh roared with laughter. “All right, Maria,” he cried, “let him in. He’s only my comrade—comrades in distress, and ha! ha! ha! ‘comrades’ in looks, eh, Maria?”
Maria smiled curiously. “Certainly ‘comrades’ in looks,” she said, slowly.
“By the way,” asked Marsh, as we passed into an inner room, “what name are you using?”
“Afirenko,” I said. “But that’s official. Tell Maria I’m called ‘Ivan Ilitch.’ ”
Maria set the samovar and produced some black bread and butter.
“This flat,” said Marsh, with his mouth full, “belonged to a business colleague of mine. The Reds seized him by mistake for someone else. The silly fool nearly (here Marsh used a very unparliamentary expression) with funk when he got arrested. Sat in chokey three days and was told he was to be shot, when luckily for him the right man was collared. Then they let him out and I shipped him over the frontier. They’ll forget all about him. In the daytime this is one of the safest places in town.”
The flat was almost devoid of furniture. A bare table stood in one room and a desk in another. An old couch and a few chairs made up the outfit. The windows were so dirty that they were quite opaque and admitted very little light from the narrow street. Although it was nearly midday an oil lamp burned on the table of the room we sat in. Electric light was becoming rarer and rarer and only burned for a few hours every evening.
Marsh sat and talked of his adventures and the work he had been doing for the allied colonies. His country farm had been seized and pillaged, his city business was ruined, he had long been under suspicion, and yet he refused to leave. But the arrest of his wife bore constantly on his mind. From time to time his boisterous flow of talk would suddenly cease. He would pass his hand over his brow, a faraway, troubled look coming into his eyes.
“If only it were an ordinary prison,” he would say, “if only they were human beings. But these—! By the way, will you come with me to see the Policeman? I am going to meet him in half-an-hour.” The “Policeman” was the nickname by which we referred to the Tsarist official of whom Marsh had spoken in the morning. I reflected for a moment. Perhaps the Policeman might be useful to me later. I consented.
Telling Maria to look out for us both about that time next morning, we left the flat by the back entrance, as we had entered it. Again Marsh walked ahead, and I followed his slouching figure at a distance as he wound in and out of side streets. The dwelling we were going to, he told me, was that of an ex-journalist, who was now engaged as a scribe in the Department of Public Works, and it was at the Journalist’s that he had arranged to meet the Policeman.
The Journalist lived all alone in a flat in the Liteyny Prospect. I watched Marsh disappear into the entrance and waited a moment to convince myself he was not being tracked. From the opposite sidewalk I saw him look back through the glass door, signalling that all was well within,
