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Updated: June 5, 2025
The sound of his voice provoked a sort of terror in the breast of Suvaroff. "I have just heard," he said, benevolently, "from the proprietor of the wine-shop across the way, that your neighbor has been murdered. The landlady tells me that his mother is here." The old woman roused herself. "Yes you can see for yourself that I am here. I am a poor old woman, and my son Ah!
I now turned my attention to the Suvaroff, and was just in time to witness a very plucky attack upon her by a squadron of our destroyers, which, notwithstanding her disabled condition, she beat off in most gallant fashion. Next, I turned to have a look at the Alexander Third. Her crew appeared to have extinguished the fire aboard her and got her back into something like her former trim.
But the more he drank the less genial were the shadows, and by midnight they all had become as sinister and terrible as ever. On the way home to his room Suvaroff suddenly remembered that he had a friend who was a druggist. "Perhaps he can give me something to make me sleep," Suvaroff muttered. But the drug-store was closed. Suvaroff climbed wearily up the stairs of the Hôtel des Alpes Maritimes.
Turning off Kearny Street into Broadway, he had half a notion not to go home, but his dissatisfaction was so inclusive that home seemed, at once, quite as good and as hopeless a place to go as any other. So he pushed open the door of his lodging-house and stamped rather heavily up-stairs. Although midnight, the first sound which greeted Suvaroff was the wheezing of the Italian's accordion.
For the second time the wild Russian horsemen had come to his rescue in the nick of time! But this time there was more of a fight, since the two little bodies of horsemen were far more evenly matched than had been the case when General Suvaroff had led his daring raid behind the German lines in the effort to capture von Hindenburg. For five minutes the fighting was fast and furious.
In short, everything irritated Suvaroff his profession, the café where he fiddled, the strident streets of the city, the evening mist, the Hôtel des Alpes Maritimes, where he lodged, and the Italian fisherman and his doleful accordion.
"What strange dreams people have when they are in a fever!" he exclaimed, as he put on his hat. Nevertheless, as he left the house, he did not so much as glance at the Italian's door. It was a pleasant morning, the mist had lifted and the sky was a freshly washed blue. Suvaroff walked down Kearny Street, and past Portsmouth Square.
What good would that do? Even you do not believe me!" A chill seized Suvaroff. He began to shake, and in the next instant a fever burned his cheeks. His head as full of little darting pains. He turned away from the Italian, impatiently. "You must be a pretty sort of man to let a little hunchback frighten you! Good night." And with that Suvaroff went out, slamming the door.
They were squalid, dirty, uninteresting. But their shadows were things of wonder. How was it possible for such drab people to have even interesting shadows? And why were these shadows so familiar? Suvaroff recognized each in turn, as if it were an old friend that he remembered but could not name. After the second night he came to a definite conclusion.
I am Flavio Minetti, and I kill every one who laughs at me! This Italian of whom you speak has laughed at me. I may wait a week a month. It will be the same. No one has yet escaped me." An exquisite fear began to move Suvaroff. "Nevertheless," he repeated again, "I shall tell you where he lodges. You will find him upon the third landing of the Hôtel des Alpes Maritimes.
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