Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 2.djvu/190

174 been gone an hour I tore out the pocket of my large, loose fur overcoat, dropped down between the outside cloth and the lining a few little presents that I had promised to give to the political convicts, transferred from my waist-belt to my pocket the letters that I had for them and the rough map of the village with which I was provided, and then set out on foot for the political prison. It was about two o'clock in the afternoon. Major Pótulof expected to be absent until the following night, so that I could safely count upon twenty-four hours of freedom from surveillance. My plan was to pay a visit first to Captain Nikólin, get upon the most friendly possible terms with him, remove any lingering suspicions that he might still entertain with regard to us, and then, about dark, go directly from his house to the cabin of Miss Nathalie Armfeldt, the political convict from Kiev to whom I had a letter of introduction. My object in calling first upon Captain Nikólin was two-fold. In the first place, I felt sure that he would know that Major Pótulof had just gone to Ust Kará, and I thought it would please and compliment the gendarme officer to see that I had availed myself of my very first moment of freedom to call upon him, notwithstanding Pótulof's hostility to him. In the second place, I reasoned that if I should be seen going to the house of a political convict it would be safer and would excite less suspicion to be seen going there directly from the house of the commandant than from my own quarters. In the former case it would, very likely, be thought that I was acting with the commandant's knowledge or permission; and in any case open boldness would be safer than skulking timidity.

Captain Nikólin was an old and experienced gendarme officer of the most subtle and unscrupulous type, who had received his training under General Muravióf, "the hangman," in Poland, and had been about thirty years in the service. Personally he was a short, heavily built man fifty or fifty-five years of age, with a bald head, a full gray beard,