Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 2.djvu/197

Rh hollow tooth for a letter would never, under any circumstances, have occurred to me.

"Well," he said triumphantly, "I have taken tissue paper with writing on it out of a prisoner's ear, out of a prisoner's mouth, and once I found a dose of deadly poison concealed under a capping of wax in a convict's hollow tooth. Ah-h-h!" he exclaimed, rubbing his hands, "they are very sly, but I know all their tricks."

A cold shiver ran down my back as I suddenly thought of the things that lay hidden in my overcoat. Between the cloth and the lining were two Chinese tea-cups, a hand-mirror, and a small red feather duster, which had been intrusted to me by an exiled lady in a village near Irkútsk, and which I had promised to deliver to Miss Armfeldt with assurances of the donor's remembrance and love. I had left the overcoat hanging in the hall, and if this gendarme officer was so extremely suspicious as to look in ears for letters and in hollow teeth for poison, perhaps he had already ordered one of his subordinates to make an examination of it. How I should explain the presence between the cloth and the lining of such unusual articles of equipment as two porcelain tea-cups, a hand-mirror, and a red feather duster, I did not know. I might say that Americans are constitutionally sensitive with regard to their personal appearance, and that, when making calls, they always carry looking-glasses in the tail-pockets of their overcoats, in order that they may properly adjust their neckties before entering the drawing-rooms of their acquaintances; but how should I account for the tea-cups and the long-handled feather duster? I might as well try to explain the presence of a mouse-trap and a fire-extinguisher in a diving-bell! For twenty minutes I sat there in an uncomfortable frame of mind, half expecting every time the door opened that a Cossack would enter with the red feather duster in his hand. The apprehended catastrophe, however, did not occur, and Nikólin continued to