ng on them, but at first they
appeared an ordinary crowd, pale, with a thick, unhealthy pallor, as
though from an indoor life. Their suits were poor enough,--worn
threadbare,--and their fingernails were dirty. Furtively they glanced up
at me and examined me curiously, and then gave quick, frightened looks
on either side to see if their comrades had observed their interest in
me. What a mediocre, shabby crowd, with their low foreheads and
dead-white skin and dirty linen, and, yes, the stamp on them that made
them infamous! It was as though their profession affected them the way
that living in a close, dark room would, stupefying and making them
bestial.

And then the chief came in, accompanied by two spies with black
portfolios under their arms. When he saw us, he grew white with anger.
He looked like a German, spurred and booted, with square head and jaw
and steel-like eyes and compressed, cruel lips. He was the only
well-dressed one in the crowd, but his livery was the same as theirs. He
was their superior, that was all, and how I loathed him!

"He's angry because we were brought in here," Douglas whispered under
his breath.

The chief turned his back on us.

The spies scribbled away furiously, their noses close to their paper,
not daring to look up.

We were taken into another room, a small back room, bare except for a
table and sofa and a tawdry ikon in the farthest corner. And there we
waited fully fifteen minutes in absolute silence. How silent that house
was, full of invisible horrors! The headquarters of the secret
police--why shouldn't it be terrifying when you think of the men and
women who have been brought here in secret, and their existence suddenly
snapped off: secret arrest, secret trial, or no trial at all, and then a
secret sending-off up north, out of the reach of the world! What strange
abortions of life this Government brings forth! Is it curious that
thinking men and women, who have lived apparently well-regulated lives,
suddenly throw bombs at a minister in a railway station, or at an
official as he drives to the palace in dress uniform, with jeweled
decorations on his breast? I ran my hand over the faded sofa-covering,
wondering who had sat there before me.

Suddenly the chief came into the room, closing the door carefully behind
him. He was quite calm again.

"What do you want?" He looked at Douglas.

Douglas explained how anxious we were to get out of Russia, how we had
insufficient mo