Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 2.djvu/422

406 of police himself — an evil-looking miscreant with a pock-marked face, and green, shifty, feline eyes, who, without his uniform, would have been taken anywhere for a particularly bad type of common convict. He declared that our passports were not at the police-station and had not been there, and that he wanted them immediately. Furthermore, he said, he had been directed by the isprávnik to find out "what kind of people" we were, where we had come from, and what our business was in Minusínsk. "You have been making calls," he said, "upon people in the town, and yet the isprávnik has n't seen anything of you."

"Whose fault is it that he has n't seen anything of me?" I demanded hotly. "I called on him day before yesterday, did n't find him at home, and left my card. If he wants to know 'what kind of people' we are, why does n't he return my call in a civilized manner, at a proper time of day, instead of sending a police officer around here to make impertinent inquiries before we are up in the morning? As for the 'kind of people' we are — perhaps you will be able to find out from these," and I handed him my open letters from the Russian Minister of the Interior and the Minister of Foreign Affairs. He glanced through them, and then, in a slightly changed tone and manner, inquired, "Will you permit me to take these to show to the isprávnik?"

"Certainly," I replied; "that's what they are for."

He bowed and withdrew, while I went down to see the proprietor of the house and to find out what he had done with the passports. It appeared that they had been taken to the police-station at once, but that the police secretary could neither read them nor make anything out of them, and had stupidly or angrily declined to receive them; whereupon the proprietor had brought them back and put them away safely in a cupboard drawer. In the course of half an hour the inspector of police returned with the open letters, which he handed me without remark. I gave him