The Secret City

They had been travelling for a week, and had quite definitely decided that they had nothing whatever in common. As they stood there, lost and desolate on the grimy platform of the Finland station, this same thought must have been paramount in their minds: “Thank God we shan’t have to talk to one another any longer. Whatever else may happen in this strange place that at least we’re spared.” They were probably quite unconscious of the contrast they presented, unconscious because, at this time, young Bohun never, I should imagine, visualised himself as anything more definite than absolutely “right,” and Lawrence simply never thought about himself at all. But they were perfectly aware of their mutual dissatisfaction, although they were of course absolutely polite. I heard of it afterwards from both sides, and I will say quite frankly that my sympathy was all with Lawrence. Young Bohun can have been no fun as a travelling companion at that time. If you had looked at him there standing on the Finland station platform and staring haughtily about for porters you must have thought him the most self-satisfied of mortals. “That fellow wants kicking,” you would have said. Good-looking, thin, tall, large black eyes, black eyelashes, clean and neat and “right” at the end of his journey as he had been at the beginning of it, just foreign-looking enough with his black hair and pallor to make him interesting⁠—he was certainly arresting.

He stepped into the dark hall, damp like a well, with a whirring snarling clock on the wall and a heavy glass door pulled by a rope swinging and shifting, the walls and door and rack with the letters shifting too. In this rocking world there seemed to be no stable thing. He was dirty and tired and humiliated. He explained to his host, who smiled but seemed to be thinking of other things, that he wanted a bath and a room and a meal. He was promised these things, but there was no conviction abroad that the France had gone up in the world since Henry Bohun had crossed its threshold. An old man with a grey beard and the fixed and glittering eye of the “Ancient Mariner” told him to follow him. How well I know those strange, cold, winding passages of the France, creeping in and out across boards that shiver and shake, with walls pressing in upon you so thin and rocky that the wind whistles and screams and the paper makes ghostly shadows and signs as though unseen fingers moved it. There is that smell, too, which a Russian hotel alone, of all the hostelries in the world, can produce, a smell of damp and cabbage soup, of sunflower seeds and cigarette-ends, of drainage and patchouli, of, in some odd way, the sea and fish and wet pavements.

Then Nina burst in upon us in one of her frantic rages. Her tempers were famous both for their ferocity and the swiftness of their passing. In the course of them she was like some impassioned bird of brilliant plumages, tossing her feathers, fluttering behind the bars of her cage at some impertinent, teasing passerby. She stood there now in the doorway, gesticulating with her hands.

“Nu, Tznaiesh schto? Michael Alexandrovitch has put me off⁠—says he is busy all night at the office. He busy all night! Don’t I know the business he’s after? And it’s the third time⁠—I won’t see him again⁠—no, I won’t. He⁠—”

“Good evening, Nina Michailovna,” I said, smiling. She turned to me.

“Durdles⁠—Mr. Durdles⁠—only listen. It was all arranged for tonight⁠—the Parisian, and then we were to come straight back⁠—”

“But your guest⁠—” I began.

However the torrent continued. The door opened and Boris Grogoff came in. Instantly she turned upon him.

“There’s your fine friend!” she cried; “Michael Alexandrovitch isn’t coming. Put me off at the last moment, and it’s the third time. And I might have gone to Musikalnaya Drama. I was asked by⁠—”

“Well, why not?” Grogoff interrupted calmly. “If he had something better to do⁠—”

Then she turned upon him, screaming, and in a moment they were at it, tooth and nail, heaping up old scores, producing fact after fact to prove, the one to the other, false friendship, lying manners, deceitful promises, perjured records.

And now the moment for the event of the evening had arrived. The doors of Markovitch’s little workroom were suddenly opened, and there⁠—instead of the shabby untidy dark little hole⁠—there was a splendid Christmas tree blazing with a hundred candles. Coloured balls and frosted silver and wooden figures of red and blue hung all about the tree⁠—it was most beautifully done. On a table close at hand were presents. We all clapped our hands. We were childishly delighted. The old great-aunt cried with pleasure. Boris Grogoff suddenly looked like a happy boy of ten. Happiest and proudest of them all was Markovitch. He stood there, a large pair of scissors in his hand, waiting to cut the string round the parcels. We said again and again, “Marvellous!” “Wonderful!” “Splendid!”⁠ ⁠… “But this year⁠—however did you find it, Vera Michailovna?” “To take such trouble!⁠ ⁠…” “Splendid! Splendid!” Then we were given our presents. Vera, it was obvious had chosen them, for there was taste and discrimination in the choice of every one. Mine was a little old religious figure in beaten silver⁠—Lawrence had a silver snuffbox.⁠ ⁠… Everyone was delighted. We clapped our hands. We shouted. Someone cried “Cheers for our host and hostess!”

We gave them, and in no half measure. We shouted. Boris Grogoff cried, “More cheers!”

It was then that I saw Markovitch’s face that had been puckered with pleasure like the face of a delighted child suddenly stiffen, his hand moved forward, then dropped. I turned and found, standing in the doorway, quietly watching us, Alexei Petrovitch Semyonov.

She was interrupted by a knock on the outer hall door. To both of them that sound must have been terribly alarming. Vera said afterwards, that “at once we realised that it was the knock of someone more frightened than we were.”

In the first place, no one ever knocked, they always rang the rather rickety electric bell⁠—and then the sound was furtive and hurried, and even frantic; “as though,” said Vera, “someone on the other side of the door was breathless.”

The sisters stood, close together, for quite a long time without moving. The knocking ceased and the room was doubly silent. Then suddenly it began again, very rapid and eager, but muffled, almost as though someone were knocking with a gloved hand.

Vera went then. She paused for a moment in the little hall, for again there was silence and she fancied that perhaps the intruder had given up the matter in despair. But, no⁠—there it was again⁠—and this third time seemed to her, perhaps because she was so close to it, the most urgent and eager of all. She went to the door and opened it. There was no light in the passage save the dim reflection from the lamp on the lower floor, and in the shadow she saw a figure cowering back into the corner behind the door.

“Who is it?” she asked. The figure pushed past her, slipping into their own little hall.

“But you can’t come in like that,” she said, turning round on him.

“Shut the door!” he whispered. “Bozhe moi! Bozhe moi.⁠ ⁠… Shut the door.”

She recognised him then. He was the policeman from the corner of their street, a man whom they knew well.