Page:Ossendowski - The Shadow of the Gloomy East.djvu/65

Rh sentenced to imprisonment for two years, which I spent in Siberia, I saw a woman poisoner who had been condemned to fifteen years' hard labour for a series of crimes. She was an elderly, lean, blackhaired, sinister-faced hag, with her eyes always cast down. Her movements were slow and lazy; there was something of a wild animal in the cautiousness of her gait and the manner in which she turned her head. It was only rarely that she lifted her eyes, but when she did so, I was struck with the heavy, immovable glare of those black pupils which pierced into the very soul. The woman's name was Irene Gulkina. How many agonies of human beings, tossed in pain and fear, slain by her terrible and sinister science, had been looked upon by those apparently calm eyes? What thoughts rested in that head, so gravely and deliberately moving upon the long thin neck?

She was a grand criminal. The courts discovered twenty victims killed by this "viedunya" in various districts, for the poisoners naturally cannot remain in one place, but after each crime move away somewhere else, appeasing the suspicious with money and gifts.

All of a sudden the news spread throughout the prison that a new crime committed by this woman had been detected. One of the courts in Southern Russia proved that the heirs of a certain rich proprietor entered upon their heritage with the benevolent assistance of Gulkina, the proprietor and several direct heirs having been put out of the way. Further develop-