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Updated: June 29, 2025
The discord of their mirth rilled the street; the big men, padded out under their clothes to a grotesque obesity, their long coats hanging to their heels giving them the aspect of figures out of a Noah's Ark, drew all eyes. The beginnings of a crowd gathered to watch and listen. "The Amerikanetz," the foremost istvostchik was roaring. "Look at him! Look at his clothes!
The call was answered from the Admiralty Square; a sled dashed up the Gorokhovaya and halted beside him. Taking the single seat, he lifted her gently upon his lap and held her very tenderly in his arms. "Where?" asked the istvostchik. Boris was about to answer "Anywhere!" but the lady whispered in a voice of silver sweetness, the name of a remote street, near the Smolnoi Church.
Before he supposed they had made half the way, she gave a sign to the istvostchik, and they drew up before a plain house of squared logs. The two lower windows were lighted, and the dark figure of an old man, with a skull-cap upon his head, was framed in one of them.
The matter was slight, after all; she would explain the whole matter to her Chief of Police, how the istvostchik had been the assailant and so forth; he would be released, and her self-appointed function of "vice-vice" would shine forth justified and vindicated. It all fell out as dexterously as a conjuring trick. "Halt!" yelled the policeman. "I know you, halt!"
Waters was frankly aghast; this, upon the top of his other troubles, was overwhelming. The istvostchik ruptured the moment with a brassy yell. "Wow!" he howled. "My Amerikanetz, the Foreigner, the jail-bird! Look at him, brothers!" He waved his whip as though the darkness were thronged with auditors. "Look at the jail-bird!" From the gate below the dull lamp a dvornik poked his head forth.
Suddenly recollecting himself, he begged the Prince to enter and take some refreshments, but with the air and tone of a man who hopes that his invitation will not be accepted. If such was really his hope, he was disappointed; for Boris instantly commanded the istvostchik to wait for him, and entered the humble dwelling.
There were spectators by now, dvorniks who came running and passers-by upon the other side who appeared from nowhere as though suddenly materialized. There was a sparse circle of them about the fight when it ceased, with the istvostchik down and flattened in the angle of the wall and the pavement, making small timid noises like a complaining kitten.
The wretched animal jerked forward, and Waters backed to the wall as his enemy clattered down upon him again. "That'll do you," he warned as the cabman dragged his horse to a standstill once more. "I'm not lookin' for trouble. You be on your way!" The immense ragged-edged voice of the istvostchik descended upon him, drowning his protest. "He runs away from me, this Amerikanetz!
But there's what they call a protocol fer breakin' up that istvostchik, an' you bein' our consul here." Selby rose, jerking his chair back on its castors. "Cut that out," he shrilled. "Your consul, eh? Your kind hasn't got any consul, not if you had forty passports see? You get out o' this office right now; and if they hand you six months with that protocol."
The dvornik and the istvostchik, it seemed, had laughed loudly and significantly as Waters went by, and he had turned to inquire into the joke. "Because, y'see, Mr. Selby, them Russians just don't laugh in a general way, except they're wantin' to start something. An' I heard 'em say 'Amerikanetz' just as plain as I can see you settin' there. So, a' course, I knowed it was me they was pickin' on."
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