VIII   PETER LAYS HIS PLANS

PETER went back to the Hotel Dauria after his talk with Rimsky. The sleepy-eyed youth who had promised a room, carried Peter’s baggage to the upper floor, where Peter signed the register in a cage-like little office.

Then they went on down a hall past a dining room which was deserted. Peter looked in. It was filled with battered tables, tubbed rubber plants in the window sills, and crazy chairs which had been used in defense and had legs in splints.

The walls had been stripped of paper. The mirrors of the buffet-counter at one end of the room had been smashed out and triangles of broken glass still stuck in the frames. The curtains had been pulled from the poles over the windows and the doors. Painted decorations on the wainscoting had been smeared with the contents of catsup and vinegar bottles, which had burst against the walls like star shells and the acids had discolored the pictures of the crude drawings so that the wall was spotted and leprous-looking.

Peter was taken to a large room at the end of the hall. It had three double windows overlooking the end of a side street that ran into the Sofistkaya, with a view of the latter. He could see the old post-house and the roof of Rimsky’s hut sticking up between two higher buildings.

There was an iron bed without bedding. There was a standing screen in front of it. The chairs had been broken but were repaired. There were slashes in the woodwork about the door where bayonets had evidently been thrust at former guests. And some of the guests had fared badly, judging by the dark stains on the old oilcloth which covered the floor.

The plaster of the walls was pitted with bullet-holes, especially opposite the windows, and the panes of glass were newly puttied and still marked with the thumb-prints of the workmen.

“Can I have my meals served in the room?” asked Peter. The youth yawned.

“Yes. If you pay extra. Ring this bell three times for the samovar girl,” and he pointed to a button in the wall near the door, and the youth departed, as if afraid that he would be asked to do something.

There was an electric drop lamp on a writing table, and running water in a little sink against the wall behind the screen. There was a tall wardrobe set against a second door which evidently led to another room.

It was hard for Peter to realize that Chita could be so modern. And the room, poor as it was, seemed like a palace to Peter. His mind had been readjusted to the things he had known as a boy by his visit to Rimsky. Peter Petrovitch Gorekin would have thought himself a king to have a room like this one in which Peter Gordon was to live.

But there was no Peter Gordon now. Peter Gorekin was back in Chita. The scene which opened to him from the windows had been for twenty years in the back of his brain. The little hut, the post-house, the Sofistkaya! He found it hard to believe that he had ever been away from Chita at all.

He sat down by the window. The mild heat from the radiator had thawed away most of the frost in the panes and he looked out over the city. Things that had been but memories were now real, truly existing before his eyes in spite of his years of trying to blur their images out of his mind.

The old superstitions of peasants and exiles which he had learned in his father’s hut as a boy returned to his mind—tales of werewolves who took the shapes of men for diabolical purposes. Was there not something in it all? Was not he himself something like a werewolf? Was he not a Russian in an American coat? Michael Kirsakoff would never suspect an American officer of being the son of a dead exile. Nor would Kirsakoff suspect an American officer of being the same poor boy who had been thrown into prison for a whim—now come for vengeance.

The mysticism inherent in his race, the queer inarticulate yearnings and the dissatisfactions of the Slavic soul, came to the surface in Peter’s consciousness. But now he had knowledge of things, and power, and the means of carrying out his own ends. He would play the game carefully to an end in Chita, and then go on to Irkutsk without any one’s suspecting that the American officer had killed Kirsakoff.

He began to think of his return to Chita as a holy mission. Affairs had turned out well for him from the first. He had managed to get to Siberia instead of going to France. He had managed to get himself ordered to Irkutsk, and had slipped away from his Russian orderly with no one the wiser that Peter Gordon was really a Russian. And there was every evidence that Kirsakoff was still alive and that he was still in Chita. The reticence of Rimsky in discussing Kirsakoff was proof enough to Peter that the former Governor might be found somewhere in the Valley of Despair.

He took off his tunic and rang for a samovar. A slattern of a girl, dirty and unkempt, came trembling to the door to ask what was wanted. She was not more than fifteen—round-cheeked, with scared blue eyes, and brown hair down her back. She was wearing men’s cast-off old shoes. Peter looked at her with pity.

“Will you bring me some spice-cakes and a samovar?” he asked gently.

“Yes, master,” she said, and turned to escape.

“Don’t be frightened,” said Peter. “I am an American.”

“Yes, master,” she repeated. But she had no comprehension of what he had said.

“Here are five rubles for you,” said Peter, holding out the note to her.

But she fled through the door as he moved toward her.

“The same old system working,” thought Peter, as he watched the poor girl running down the hall. “The poor people frightened out of their wits by the ruling class! Damn such a country!”

He closed the door. He realized now that oppression was not dead in the country. His years in America had dimmed his memories of such scenes. He had begun to think that the revolution had bettered conditions for the people, that in the twenty years since he was a boy in Siberia there had been improvement.

The old rage began to grow in him again. He lusted to kill. He wanted to help the people, aside from his own blood vengeance. He wondered if his dead father had not been able to help in having the son return to Chita. His return might be in the nature of a destiny which it would be sinful to avoid, even divine in its workings. It was all as if some controlling star had put power into his hands, and had swung him back to the land of his boyhood. It would be impossible to go against fate. He felt that no man could stand out against what had every sign of being a directed destiny.

Peter was filled with a strange exaltation, a very frenzy of joy over the thought that it would now be possible to pay off his old debt of revenge against Michael Kirsakoff. The words of an old folk song began to run through his mind and he hummed it gently, pausing to catch some of the almost forgotten words.

He got out his razor and shaved himself before the big wall mirror between the windows. The peace and quiet of his room were luxuries after the days and nights of living and sleeping on the pounding train among the Czech soldiers. He had time now for careful planning, and he desired to make the acquaintance of Kirsakoff at leisure, arrange the details of how the Governor should be killed and then carry through the project with all possible skill so that his tracks might be covered. There would be many pitfalls to avoid, many nicely balanced circumstances.

It would not be enough for Peter merely to kill Kirsakoff. The Governor must know who brought death to him, must understand before he was sent into eternity that it was Peter Petrovitch Gorekin, son of the bootmaker, who took vengeance.

The girl came with the samovar and the cakes and left them on the table. She fled again without taking the five-ruble note which Peter had left upon the table for her.

Peter sat by the window and ate and drank. The sun dropped behind the rim of the hill and twilight came swiftly. In the street below a line of rude carts passed, drawn by frosty ponies with their drivers plodding along behind the carts. They walked like men in their sleep, oblivious of everything about them and steeped in the torturing cold.

Farther up the street four men were drifting about aimlessly, tipsy with vodka. They drew together at times to engage in maudlin argument, and staggered about like clumsy bears, lurching at one another in wild plunges and falling in the street.

The four roisterers disappeared. A squad of Japanese soldiers came stumbling down the street, evidently going on guard at the station for the night. They appeared to be half frozen, but they doggedly maintained some semblance of military formation. Their heads were so wrapped in cloths that they could hardly see their way, and the fur straps across their faces were white with frost from the moisture of their nostrils. Their big shoes were stuffed with straw, which hung out over the tops. The agonizing cold, despite the heavy clothing of the men, had penetrated to their bodies and had chilled them to a condition akin to lethargy. They walked as if through semiliquid air which impeded their movements.

Peter remained by the window smoking, while the frost gradually grew up the windows. He was wondering how he could find Kirsakoff. It would not do to make direct inquiries. It might be possible to draw more from Rimsky, but it would be wise to wait before pressing the cigarette-seller to talk about Kirsakoff. The graybeard would be suspicious—he was already suspicious that Peter had some other motive in going to the hut than buying cigarettes. Yes, it would be safer to keep away from Rimsky for a few days, and perhaps wise not to move about the city too much and start gossip. He might be watched at first, but after a few days his presence in the city would be taken as a matter of course. Then he could begin his quest for Kirsakoff.

With this decision for the future, Peter prepared for bed.