"I would give much to be able to read Shakespeare," Petroff said. "I have heard his works spoken of in such high terms by some of our friends who have studied your language, and I have heard, too, from them of your Dickens. They tell me it is like reading of another world—a world in which there are no officials, and no police, and no soldiers. That must be very near a paradise."
"We have some soldiers," Godfrey laughed, "but one does not see much of them. About half of those we have at home are in two military camps, one in England and one in Ireland. There are the Guards in London, but the population is so large that you might go a week without seeing one, while in very few of the provincial towns are there any garrisons at all. There are police, and plenty of them, but as their business is only to prevent crime, they naturally don't play a prominent part in novels giving a picture of everyday life. As to officials, beyond rate-collectors we don't see anything of them, though there are magistrates, and government clerks, and custom officers, and that sort of thing, but they certainly don't play any prominent part in our lives."
So they chatted for an hour, when at short intervals two other men came in. One was a tall handsome fellow who was introduced by Petroff as the son of Baron Kinkoff, the other was a young advocate of Moscow on a visit to St. Petersburg. Both, Godfrey observed, had knocked in a somewhat peculiar manner at the door, which opened, as he had noticed when they came in, only by a key. Akim observed a slight expression of surprise in Godfrey's face at the second knock, and said laughing:
"Our remittances have not come to hand of late, Godfrey, and some of our creditors are getting troublesome, so we have established a signal by which we know our friends, while inconvenient visitors can knock as long as they like, and then go away thinking we are out."
Godfrey chatted for a short time longer, and then got up to go. Akim went to the door with him. As it opened there was a sudden rush of men from outside that nearly knocked him down. Of what followed he had but a vague idea. Pistol shots rang out. There was a desperate struggle. He received a blow on the head which struck him to the ground, and an instant later there was a tremendous explosion. The next thing he knew was that he was being hauled from below some debris. As he looked round bewildered he saw that a considerable portion of the ceiling and of the roof above it had been blown out. Several bodies lay stretched on the floor. The room was still full of smoke, but by the light of two or three lanterns he perceived that the young baron, bleeding freely from a sabre wound across the forehead, was standing bound between two policemen with drawn swords. Policemen were examining the bodies on the floor, while others were searching the closets, cutting open the beds and turning out their contents. Akim lay on his back dead, and across him lay the young advocate. Of Petroff he could see nothing; the other bodies were those of policemen. Three of these near the door appeared to have been shot; the others were lying in contorted positions against the walls, as if they had been flung there by the force of the explosion. All this he saw in a state of vague wonderment, while the two policemen kneeling at his side were passing cords tightly round him.
"This one still lives," one of the policemen said, stooping over the young advocate, "but I think he is nearly done for."
"Never mind, bring him along with the others," a man in plain clothes said in tones of authority. "Get them away at once, we shall have half St. Petersburg here in a few minutes."
Godfrey was lifted by the policemen, one at his head, and one at his feet, carried down-stairs, and flung into a vehicle at the door. Dully he heard a roar of excited shouts and questions, and the sharp orders of the police ranged round the vehicle. Three policemen took their places inside with him, and the vehicle drove off, slowly at first until it was free of the crowd, and then at a sharp gallop. Godfrey was conscious of but little as he went along; he had a vague idea of a warm moist feeling down the back, and wondered whether it was his own blood. Gradually his impressions became more and more indistinct, and he knew nothing more until he was conscious of a sensation of cold at the back of the head, and of a murmur of voices round him. Soon he was lifted up into a sitting position, and he felt that bandages were being wrapped round his head. Then he was laid down again, he heard a door slam and a key turn, and then he knew nothing more. When he awoke daylight was streaming in through a loophole high up in the wall. He tried to sit up, but could not, and looked round trying to recall where he was and what had happened. He was in a dark cell with no furniture save the straw on which he was lying.
"It is a prison certainly," he muttered to himself. "How did I get here?"
Then gradually the events of the night before came to his mind. There had been a terrible fight. Akim had been killed. There had been a tremendous explosion. The police had something to do with it. Was it all a dream, or was it real? Was he dreaming now? He was some time before he could persuade himself that it was all real, and indeed it was not until the door opened and two men entered that he felt quite sure that he, Godfrey Bullen, was really lying there in a prison cell, with a dull numbing pain at the back of his head, and too weak even to sit upright. One of the men leaned over him. Godfrey tried to speak, but could not do so above a whisper.
"He will do now," the man said without paying any attention to his words. "He must have a thick skull or that sword-cut would have finished him. Give him some wine and water now, and some soup presently. We must not let him slip through our fingers."
Some liquid was poured between his lips, and then he was left alone again. "Certainly it is all real," he said to himself. "Akim must have been killed, and I must be a prisoner. What in the world can it be all about?" He was too weak to think, but after another visit had been paid him, and he had been lifted up and given some strong broth, he began to think more clearly. "Can it have been a Nihilist arrest?" he thought to himself. "Akim and Petroff can never be Nihilists. The idea is absurd. I have never heard them say a word against the government or the Czar."
Then he thought of their friend Katia, and how she had got him to aid in the escape of a Nihilist. "It is all nonsense," he murmured, "the idea of a girl like that being mixed up in a conspiracy." Then his ideas again became more and more confused, and when the doctor visited him again in the evening he was in a state of high fever, talking incoherently to himself. For seven days he continued in that state. There was no lack of care; the doctor visited him at very short intervals, and an attendant remained night and day beside him, applying cold bandages to his head, and carefully noting down in a book every word that passed his lips. Then a good constitution gradually triumphed over the fever, and on the eighth day he lay a mere shadow of himself, but cool and sensible, on a bed in an airy ward. Nourishing food was given to him in abundance, but it was another week before he was able to stand alone. Then one morning two attendants brought a stretcher to the side of his bed. He was assisted to put on his clothes, and was then placed on the stretcher and carried away. He was taken through long passages, up and down stairs, at last into a large room. Here he was lifted on the stretcher and placed in a chair. Facing him at a table were nine officers.
"Prisoner," the president said, glancing at a large closely-written sheet of paper before him, "you are accused of taking part in a Nihilist conspiracy to murder the Czar."
"I know nothing of any Nihilist conspiracy," Godfrey said. "I was accidentally in the room with my friends Akim and Petroff when the police entered."
The president waved his hand impatiently. "That of course," he said. "Your name is Godfrey Bullen?"
"Yes, sir."
"Born in St. Petersburg, but of English parentage?"
Godfrey bowed his head.
"Three months since you took part in the plot by means of which the notorious Valerian Ossinsky