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Updated: September 11, 2025
But since Victor continued to smoke absently, paying no attention, Nogam resigned himself to wait with entire patience: the perfect pattern of a servant tempered by long servitude to the erratic winds of employers' whims; efficient, assiduous, mute unless required to speak, long-suffering. Victor addressed him suddenly, in a sharp voice that drew from Sturm a glitter of eager spite. "Nogam!"
To be told, by the father of whose dear existence one had only learned within the hour, that one was the child of a notorious thief and an adventuress ... It needed more than common fortitude to face renewed reminder of that shame. Oddly enough, it seemed to help a bit, somehow to lend her courage and assurance, to pass the man Nogam in the hall and acknowledge his bow and smile.
Nevertheless, undue inquisitiveness on the part of a servant in the pay of Victor Vassilyevski could have but one reward. "Nogam!" "Sir?" "Fetch me an A-B-C." "Very good, sir." With Nogam out of the way, Victor enclosed the telegram in a new envelope and addressed it simply to "Mr. Sturm by hand."
And in this grateful obscurity Nogam permitted himself the luxury of ceasing to be Nogam. A light suddenly flashed upon his face would have discovered a keen and alert intelligence transfiguring the apathetic mask of every day. Also, it would have rendered Nogam's probable duration of life an interesting speculation.
Under cover of the darkness, furthermore, he did a number of things which Nogam, qua Nogam, would never have dreamed of doing. His first act was to withdraw from under his pillow the turnip, his next to re-open the back of its silver case and then the inner lid something which a deft thumbnail accomplished without a sound.
Victor heard the vehicle roll in and stand panting at the curb, then the slam of its door, the diminishing rumble of its departure. The house door closed, and after a little the study door opened, and Nogam halted on the threshold. Unstirring Victor enquired: "What is it, Nogam?" "I wished to enquire would there be anything more to-night, sir." "Nothing." "'Nk you, sir."
Perhaps it was nervousness bred of this anxiety that, in the end, made Nogam's hand slip. Or perhaps the impatient nature of the man who lay so closely secret within the husk of Nogam decided him upon a desperate gamble. In either event, this befell: About the middle of the evening Prince Victor happened to look up from an interesting tête-
To one side stood a manservant to whom Sofia paid no attention till the sound of his name on Karslake's tongue struck an echo from her memory. "Thanks, Nogam. Prince Victor home yet?" "Not yet, sir." "Tell him, please, when he comes in, we're waiting in the study." "'Nk-you, sir." The servant was the man whom Karslake had met in the Café des Exiles only a few hours before.
She contrived to shake her head slightly and utter an inarticulate sound of negation, then began slowly to mount the stairs. Below, Nogam stood watching, in a pose of indecision, as if tempted to follow and offer the support of an arm lest she fall, restrained only by fear of a rebuff.
When the secretary had gone, Victor sat motionless, so still that his breathing scarcely stirred his body, with a face absolutely imperturbable, steadfastly gazing into that darkness which shrouded the workings of his mind. On the doorstep a shrill whistle sounded: Nogam calling Karslake's taxi.
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