Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 2.djvu/395

Rh On the second day after our arrival in Krasnoyársk we narrowly escaped getting into what might have been serious trouble as the result of an unexpected perquisition in the house of the acquaintance with whom Shamárin and Peterson were staying. This acquaintance, it seemed, was under suspicion, and late in the evening, during the absence of the two young men from their quarters, the police suddenly appeared with orders to make a house-search. The search was duly made, but nothing of a suspicious nature was found except the two locked trunks of Shamárin and Peterson. In reply to a question as to what was in them the proprietor of the house said that he did not know, that they were the property of two of his acquaintances who had stopped for a few days with him on their way from Irkútsk to St. Petersburg. Upon being asked where these acquaintances were, he replied that he did not know, that they usually went out after dinner and returned between eleven and twelve o'clock. After a brief consultation the police officers decided that as they had no orders to search the personal baggage of the house-owner's guests they would not force the locks of the trunks, but would merely cord and seal them so that the contents could not be tampered with, and leave them until morning.

When Shamárin and Peterson returned to their quarters about midnight they found their trunks corded and sealed so that they could not be opened. In one of them were many letters from political exiles and convicts in Eastern Siberia to friends and relatives in European Russia — letters describing my investigations and the nature of the material that I was collecting, and asking the friends and relatives in European Russia to coöperate with me — and a photograph of myself that I had given to Shamárin with a dedication or inscription on the back that would reveal to any intelligent police officer the intimate nature of my relations with political convicts. What was to be done? To break a police seal under such circumstances would be a