Page:Ossendowski - From President to Prison.djvu/359

Rh and circumstances. The lock of my desk was broken, and all my records and materials had disappeared. I went at once to the factory office to see the owner but was told that he had left the previous evening for St. Petersburg and that he would not be back for a week.

When he arrived and I told him of what had happened, he smiled and said that I was a naive and not very careful man. From his expression I understood at once that he was not naive and careless and that it was he who had robbed me. When I told him this without equivocation, he did not take offence but simply smiled in triumph and answered:

"You have no proof of it, while I have registered the Aflamite in St. Petersburg. There is nothing to be done about it. This is the struggle for existence."

My first wave of impulse was to try on this crass thief the strength of my muscles, which are also at times weapons in the struggle for existence; but, as I was just on the point of doing so, I saw before me, like a spectre, the dark prison building and within its walls the figures of those who had been chuted into the stone bags because they followed, without thinking or weighing the consequences, their first impulses of indignation and revenge. I shuddered at the picture and slackened the tension of my muscles and fists. I looked straight into the cold, shameless eyes of the man who had stolen the products of my mind—I looked steadily and for so long a time that he was troubled; and then without changing my gaze, I said distinctly:

"You are a common thief. You have wronged a man who has done no evil to you or to any of his kind and who has passed through long months of torture and prison. You knew of all this and took advantage of it, certain that I could not secure justice before the law; but