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"Now, brothers, close up!" cried the red-nosed man, and all stood in close order, elbow to elbow, round the table. "And now we take a newspaper and have it handy on the table! That is in case," he explained to Bodlevski, "any outsider happened in on us which Heaven prevent! We aren't up to anything at all; simply reading the political news! You catch on?" "How could I help catching on?"
Bodlevski, with his obstinate, persistent, and concentrated character, reached the highest skill in card-sharping and the allied wiles. All games of "chance" were for him games of skill. At thirty he looked at least ten years older. The life he led, with its ceaseless effort, endless mental work, perpetual anxiety, had made of him a fanatical worshiper at the shrine of trickery.
From that moment he took a new lease of life; he grew younger, he became gay and self-confident, his health even visibly improved, and he assumed the air and manner of a perfect gentleman. As for Natasha, her life and efforts in concert with Bodlevski by no means had the same wearing effect on her as on him. Her proud, decided nature received all these impressions quite differently.
"And this means that I am in your power? she said slowly, raising her piercing glance to his face. "Yes; it means that you are in my power," quietly and confidently answered Count Kallash. "But you forget that you and I are in the same boat." "You mean that I am a sharper, like you and Bodlevski? Well, you are right. "She, thanks to many things, has tasted misery, but she is honest.
But in spite of this understanding it was evident that Bodlevski and Count Kallash had not impressed each other very favorably. This, however, did not prevent the concert of the powers from working vigorously together. On the wharf of the Fontauka, not far from Simeonovski Bridge, a crowd was gathered.
Bodlevski, feeling his side pocket to see if the passport was still there, at last left the hall, bewildered, as though under a spell. He felt a kind of gloomy satisfaction; he was possessed by this satisfaction, by the uncertainty of what Natasha could have thought out, by the question how it would all turn out, and by the conviction that his first crime had already been committed.
As the boat glided on, the match burned out in Count Kallash's fingers. He threw it into the water, and opened his matchbox to take another. At the same moment he felt a sharp blow on the head, followed by a second, and he sank senseless in the bottom of the boat. "Where is the money?" cried Bodlevski, who had struck him with the handle of the oar.
"Kasimir Bodlevski," muttered the old woman, knitting her brows. "Was he not once a lithographer or an engraver, or something of the sort?" "I think he was. I think Kovroff said something about it. He is a fine engraver still." "He was? Well, there you are!" and Princess Anna rose quickly from her seat. "It is she it is Natasha! She used to tell me she had a sweetheart, a Polish hero, Bodlevski.
Bodlevski paid the money over in advance, and Yuzitch led him into a back room. On the table burned a tallow candle, which hardly lit up the faces of seven people who were grouped round it, one of them being the red-nosed man who was reading the Police News. The seven men were all from the districts of Vilna and Vitebsk, and were specialists in the art of fabricating passports.
Their recognition was mutual, and, after a more or less faithful recital of the events of the intervening years, they had entered into an offensive and defensive alliance. When Baroness von Doring was comfortably settled in her new quarters, Sergei Antonovitch brought a visitor to Bodlevski: none other than the Hungarian nobleman, Count Nicholas Kallash.
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