“I am not looking for thanks,” Basil dryly observed.
“All the better for you. But you don’t suppose I can give you the information you seek at five seconds’ notice, do you, boiling youth? My head is no longer pigeon-holed like a receptacle for _dossiers_.”
“I wish you could, for I am leaving for Tverna on the next train, and I do not expect to be in Petersburg again for some time.”
“As pressing as that? Had trouble with your peasants, I heard, some time ago. Nothing very terrible, eh?”
“You have preserved your martial curtness, I see. I’m glad it wasn’t serious, since you are so constructed that you can’t bring yourself to shoot a few of them down to cool their blood. Ah! You can flatter yourself that your father and you were and are merciful proprietors! But, mark my words, my boy, you will get yourself shaken out of the saddle if you continue to ride without a martingale. The efforts of our worthy agitators will be crowned with success sooner or later; never doubt it; and when you have to call in a _sotnia_ or two of whole-hearted Kossàks in order to prevent murder and sudden death, those _mujiks_ of yours will rue the day when you gave them their head so imprudently. Here I am, however, galloping my favorite hobby again, instead of thinking of your _Lesghise_. Let me see--an English officer, did you say?”
He raised himself from the downy depths of his great arm-chair, and hobbled--for he had a gouty foot--to a large safe in the corner, draped and concealed beneath a Persian silk fabric that had the bloom of a ripe plum upon its soft folds.
Refusing Basil’s aid, he opened the ponderous steel door, turned on an electric bulb near by, and after a few moments’ search returned to his seat, holding in his hand a thick-set volume bound in dark-green morocco, and gold-lettered at the back “Daily Journal.”
“Here,” he laughed, “behold the heart of hearts of a police tyrant, the _sacro-sanctum_ of his labors--a _précis_ of great and minute events that may or may not come to a head and endanger the peace of the Empire! Nobody, until now, has ever seen even the outside of this spicy little work.”
Basil inclined his head to thank the General for his flattering confidence, and sat immovable while his companion flipped over the pages covered from top to bottom with close, small-writ lines, interspersed here and there with annotations in red ink, as he could clearly discern from where he sat.