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He whistled and said banteringly: "Tell me now, if you please! Didn't you kill him?" "I? No, I didn't kill him," answered Trirodov. "Who then?" asked Ostrov in his derisive voice. "He's alive," said Trirodov. "Fiddlesticks!" exclaimed Ostrov. And he burst out into a loud, insolent, hoarse laugh, though he seemed panic-stricken at the same time.
Trirodov's eyes had a tranquil look. He seemed remote. His voice had a calm, hollow sound. Ostrov exclaimed vehemently: "Don't imagine for a moment that I have fallen into a trap. If I don't leave this place, I have prepared something that will send you to gaol." "Nonsense," said Trirodov as quietly as before. "I'm not afraid. In the last resort I can emigrate."
Little by little Matov grew candid, and began to boast of his connexions with the police, and of the great number of people he had skilfully betrayed. The door leading to the next room was hung with draperies. Three people were hiding in that room Trirodov, Ostrov, and the young working man Krovlin. They were listening. Krovlin was intensely excited.
Ostrov fell back into his chair. His red face became tinged with a sudden grey pallor. His eyes, now bloodshot, half closed like those of a prostrate doll with the eye mechanism in its stomach. There was witheredness, almost lifelessness, in Ostrov's voice: "Poltinin." "Your friend?" asked Trirodov. "Well, go on." "He is now being sought for," went on Ostrov in the same lifeless way.
A clear, childish voice behind his back uttered quietly: "Not here." Ostrov looked on both sides timidly, half stealthily, bending his head low and letting it sink between his shoulders. Quite close by a pale, blue-eyed boy dressed in white was standing and eyeing him with intent scrutiny. "They won't hear you here. Every one has left," he said. "Where is one to ring?" Ostrov asked harshly.
Petersburg is crossed by the line separating the Pale from the prohibited interior. A proposal had been made to permit the coachmen to drive their passengers as far as Pskov. But when the report was submitted to the Tzar, he appended the following resolution: "Agreeable; though not to Pskov, but to Ostrov" the town nearest to the Pale.
He entered a short, dark corridor in the thick wall; then another court. No one was there. The door closed noiselessly behind him. "How many courts are there in this devilish hole?" growled Ostrov. A narrow path paved with stone stretched before him.
The very life which we are now creating is a joining, as it were, of real existence with fantastic and Utopian elements. Take, for example, this affair of...." In this manner Trirodov interrupted the conversation about Ostrov and changed it to another subject that was agitating all circles at the time. He left very soon after that. The others also stayed but a short time.
Piotr, annoyed at being disconcerted by the stranger's question, said sharply: "A vagrant is one who roams about without shelter and without money and obtrudes upon others instead of attending to his own business." "Thank you for the definition," said Ostrov with a bow. "It is true that I have but little money and that I'm compelled to roam about such is the nature of my profession."
"It is just such people that we want." That was how Ostrov came to be admitted into the union. He worked very zealously on its behalf. One of the chief functions of the Black Hundred was to lodge information against certain people. They informed the Governor and the head of the District Schools that Trirodov's wards had been at the funeral of the working men killed in the woods.
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