t shout that damned name! There are ears
everywhere," he whispered.

He took me by the arm and dragged me all along the Morskaya, giving me
short and hard kicks as soon as I would open my mouth. And only when
we reached his room and he verified as to whether or not the door was
well shut, he said:

"Now what seems to be your question, and what in hell do you know
about her? Who told you that something happened to her?"

As this is the time when "homo homini--lupus," I said that nobody ever
told me of her, but having met Mikhalovsky at the Club I thought of
the Baroness and asked.

"Well," he said, "she was released." And Mikhalovsky became sad and
worried, looking humble and frightened.

"I am all tangled up, friend!" he said. "I think I am in mortal
danger. Last Friday Kerensky asked me to come to his office and said
she must be freed, and everything was a misunderstanding. He said he
had received proof; her arrest was a mistake. He also said that we all
must be careful about our arrests, "from the left, as well as from the
right."

"Did the British Embassy intervene?"--"Not at all (it seems though
they never had heared of it)."

--"and here," he continued, "we received a letter signed by Executive
Committee, Department of Political Research, saying that unless the
whole dossier of the Baroness B. was burned, the undersigned of the
message reserved the privilege of knowing how to deal with it. Misha
was so disgusted with the letter that he went to see Kerensky,
and explained that a body of doubtful prerogatives and no official
standing had no right to insult an official institution by threats.
Kerensky read the letter, studied the attached signatures and said
"that he would not pay any particular attention to the letter, that
there was decidedly no reason to think that the authority of the
Department was offended, or held in contempt." He took the letter from
Misha saying that "as I see it affects you too much, I will make a
private and personal investigation and let you know when I get some
results."

"Now," Mikhalovsky continued, lowering his voice, "Misha has
disappeared. He is not in the office. He has never come home since the
morning he told me all of that. When I asked his chief whether he knew
anything about Misha--I got an answer that he was looking for him
all over the city and could find neither Misha nor a dossier which
he needs more than Misha himself! I feel,--I know, Misha is dead. And
surely