"Yes, I see you here; and I a.s.sume you are here on account of the Haldin affair?"
His manner changed.
"You call it the Haldin affair--do you?" he observed indifferently.
"I have no right to ask you anything," I said. "I wouldn"t presume. But in that case the mother and the sister of him who must be a hero in your eyes cannot be indifferent to you. The girl is a frank and generous creature, having the n.o.blest--well--illusions. You will tell her nothing--or you will tell her everything. But speaking now of the object with which I"ve approached you first, we have to deal with the morbid state of the mother. Perhaps something could be invented under your authority as a cure for a distracted and suffering soul filled with maternal affection."
His air of weary indifference was accentuated, I could not help thinking, wilfully.
"Oh yes. Something might," he mumbled carelessly.
He put his hand over his mouth to conceal a yawn. When he uncovered his lips they were smiling faintly.
"Pardon me. This has been a long conversation, and I have not had much sleep the last two nights."
This unexpected, somewhat insolent sort of apology had the merit of being perfectly true. He had had no nightly rest to speak of since that day when, in the grounds of the Chateau Borel, the sister of Victor Haldin had appeared before him. The perplexities and the complex terrors--I may say--of this sleeplessness are recorded in the doc.u.ment I was to see later--the doc.u.ment which is the main source of this narrative. At the moment he looked to me convincingly tired, gone slack all over, like a man who has pa.s.sed through some sort of crisis.
"I have had a lot of urgent writing to do," he added.
I rose from my chair at once, and he followed my example, without haste, a little heavily.
"I must apologize for detaining you so long," I said.
"Why apologize? One can"t very well go to bed before night. And you did not detain me. I could have left you at any time."
I had not stayed with him to be offended.
"I am glad you have been sufficiently interested," I said calmly. "No merit of mine, though--the commonest sort of regard for the mother of your friend was enough.... As to Miss Haldin herself, she at one time was disposed to think that her brother had been betrayed to the police in some way."
To my great surprise Mr. Razumov sat down again suddenly. I stared at him, and I must say that he returned my stare without winking for quite a considerable time.
"In some way," he mumbled, as if he had not understood or could not believe his ears.
"Some unforeseen event, a sheer accident might have done that," I went on. "Or, as she characteristically put it to me, the folly or weakness of some unhappy fellow-revolutionist."
"Folly or weakness," he repeated bitterly.
"She is a very generous creature," I observed after a time. The man admired by Victor Haldin fixed his eyes on the ground. I turned away and moved off, apparently unnoticed by him. I nourished no resentment of the moody brusqueness with which he had treated me. The sentiment I was carrying away from that conversation was that of hopelessness. Before I had got fairly clear of the raft of chairs and tables he had rejoined me.
"H"m, yes!" I heard him at my elbow again. "But what do you think?"
I did not look round even.
"I think that you people are under a curse."
He made no sound. It was only on the pavement outside the gate that I heard him again.
"I should like to walk with you a little."
After all, I preferred this enigmatical young man to his celebrated compatriot, the great Peter Ivanovitch. But I saw no reason for being particularly gracious.
"I am going now to the railway station, by the shortest way from here, to meet a friend from England," I said, for all answer to his unexpected proposal. I hoped that something informing could come of it. As we stood on the curbstone waiting for a tramcar to pa.s.s, he remarked gloomily--
"I like what you said just now."
"Do you?"
We stepped off the pavement together.
"The great problem," he went on, "is to understand thoroughly the nature of the curse."
"That"s not very difficult, I think."
"I think so too," he agreed with me, and his readiness, strangely enough, did not make him less enigmatical in the least.
"A curse is an evil spell," I tried him again. "And the important, the great problem, is to find the means to break it."
"Yes. To find the means."
That was also an a.s.sent, but he seemed to be thinking of something else.
We had crossed diagonally the open s.p.a.ce before the theatre, and began to descend a broad, sparely frequented street in the direction of one of the smaller bridges. He kept on by my side without speaking for a long time.
"You are not thinking of leaving Geneva soon?" I asked.
He was silent for so long that I began to think I had been indiscreet, and should get no answer at all. Yet on looking at him I almost believed that my question had caused him something in the nature of positive anguish. I detected it mainly in the clasping of his hands, in which he put a great force stealthily. Once, however, he had overcome that sort of agonizing hesitation sufficiently to tell me that he had no such intention, he became rather communicative--at least relatively to the former off-hand curtness of his speeches. The tone, too, was more amiable. He informed me that he intended to study and also to write. He went even so far as to tell me he had been to Stuttgart. Stuttgart, I was aware, was one of the revolutionary centres. The directing committee of one of the Russian parties (I can"t tell now which) was located in that town. It was there that he got into touch with the active work of the revolutionists outside Russia.
"I have never been abroad before," he explained, in a rather inanimate voice now. Then, after a slight hesitation, altogether different from the agonizing irresolution my first simple question "whether he meant to stay in Geneva" had aroused, he made me an unexpected confidence--
"The fact is, I have received a sort of mission from them."
"Which will keep you here in Geneva?"
"Yes. Here. In this odious...."
I was satisfied with my faculty for putting two and two together when I drew the inference that the mission had something to do with the person of the great Peter Ivanovitch. But I kept that surmise to myself naturally, and Mr. Razumov said nothing more for some considerable time.
It was only when we were nearly on the bridge we had been making for that he opened his lips again, abruptly--
"Could I see that precious article anywhere?"
I had to think for a moment before I saw what he was referring to.
"It has been reproduced in parts by the Press here. There are files to be seen in various places. My copy of the English newspaper I have left with Miss Haldin, I remember, on the day after it reached me. I was sufficiently worried by seeing it lying on a table by the side of the poor mother"s chair for weeks. Then it disappeared. It was a relief, I a.s.sure you."
He had stopped short.
"I trust," I continued, "that you will find time to see these ladies fairly often--that you will make time."
He stared at me so queerly that I hardly know how to define his aspect.