In the corridor Gladishev hesitated, because he did not know how to find the room to which Petrov had retired with Tamara. But the housekeeper Zociya helped him, running past him very quickly, and with a very anxious, alarmed air.

"Oh, I haven't time to bother with you now!" she snarled back at Gladishev's question. "Third door to the left."

Kolya walked up to the door indicated and knocked. Some sort of bustle and whispering sounded in the room. He knocked once more.

"Kerkovius, open! This is me--Soliterov."

Among the cadets, setting out on expeditions of this sort, it was always agreed upon to call each other by fict.i.tious names. It was not so much a conspiracy or a shift against the vigilance of those in authority, or fear of compromising one's self before a chance acquaintance of the family, but rather a play, of its own kind, at mysteriousness and disguise--a play tracing its beginning from those times when the young people were borne away by Gustave Aimard, Mayne Reid, and the detective Lecocq.

"You can't come in!" the voice of Tamara came from behind the door.

"You can't come in. We are busy."

But the ba.s.s voice of Petrov immediately cut her short:

"Nonsense! She's lying. Come in. It's all right."

Kolya opened the door.

Petrov was sitting on a chair dressed, but all red, morose, with lips pouting like a child's, with downcast eyes.

"Well, what a friend you've brought--I must say!" Tamara began speaking sneeringly and wrathfully. "I thought he was a man in earnest, but this is only some sort of a little girl! He's sorry to lose his innocence, if you please. What a treasure you've found, to be sure! But take back, take back your two roubles!" she suddenly began yelling at Petrov and tossed two coins on the table. "You'll give them away to some poor chambermaid or other! Or else save them for gloves for yourself, you marmot!"

"But what are you cursing for?" grumbled Petrov, without raising his eyes. "I'm not cursing you, am I? Then why do you curse first? I have a full right to act as I want to. But I have pa.s.sed some time with you, and so take them. But to be forced, I don't want to. And on your part, Gladishev--that is, Soliterov--this isn't at all nice. I thought she was a nice girl, but she's trying to kiss all the time, and does G.o.d knows what..."

Tamara, despite her wrath, burst into laughter.

"Oh, you little stupid, little stupid! Well, don't be angry--I'll take your money. Only watch: this very evening you'll be sorry, you'll be crying. Well, don't be angry, don't be angry, angel, let's make up. Put your hand out to me, as I'm doing to you."

"Let's go, Kerkovius," said Gladishev. "Au revoir, Tamara!"

Tamara let the money down into her stocking, through the habit of all prost.i.tutes, and went to show the boys the way.

Even at the time that they were pa.s.sing through the corridor Gladishev was struck by the strange, silent, tense bustle in the drawing room; the trampling of feet and some m.u.f.fled, low-voiced, rapid conversations.

Near that place where they had just been sitting below the picture, all the inmates of Anna Markovna's house and several outsiders had gathered. They were standing in a close knot, bending down. Kolya walked up with curiosity, and, wedging his way through a little, looked in between the heads: on the floor, sideways, somehow unnaturally drawn up, was lying Roly-Poly. His face was blue, almost black. He did not move, and was lying strangely small, shrunken, with legs bent. One arm was squeezed in under his breast, while the other was flung back.

"What's the matter with him?" asked Gladishev in a fright.

Niurka answered him, starting to speak in a rapid, jerky whisper:

"Roly-Poly just came here...Gave Manka the candy, and then started in to put Armenian riddles to us...'Of a blue colour, hangs in the parlor and whistles'...We couldn't guess nohow, but he says: 'A herring'...Suddenly he started laughing, had a coughing spell, and began falling sideways; and then--bang on the ground and don't move...They sent for the police...Lord, there's doings for you! ... I'm horribly afraid of corpseses!"

"Wait!" Gladishev stopped her. "It's necessary to feel his forehead; he may be alive yet..."

He did try to thrust himself forward, but Simeon's fingers, just like iron pincers, seized him above the elbows and dragged him back.

"There's nothing, there's nothing to be inspecting," sternly ordered Simeon, "go on, now, young gents, out of here! This is no place for you: the police will come, will summon you as witnesses--then it's scat! to the devil's dam! for you out of the military high school!

Better go while you're good and healthy!"

He escorted them to the entrance hall, shoved the great-coats into their hands and added still more sternly:

"Well, now--go at a run...Lively! So's there won't be even a whiff of you left. And if you come another time, then I won't let youse in at all. You are wise guys, you are! You gave the old hound money for whiskey--so now he's gone and croaked."

"Well, don't you get too smart, now!" Gladishev flew at him, all ruffled up.

"What d'you mean, don't get smart? ..." Simeon suddenly began to yell infuriatedly, and his black eyes without lashes and brows became so terrible that the cadets shrank back. "I'll soak you one on the snout so hard you'll forget how to say papa and mamma! Git, this second! Or else I'll bust you in the neck!"

The boys went down the steps.

At this time two men were going up, in cloth caps on the sides of their heads; one in a blue, the other in a red blouse, with the skirts outside, under the unb.u.t.toned, wide open jackets--evidently, Simeon's comrades in the profession.

"What?" one of them called out gaily from below, addressing Simeon, "Is it bye-bye for Roly-Poly?"

"Yes, it must be the finish," answered Simeon. "We've got to throw him out into the street in the meantime, fellows, or else the spirits will start haunting. The devil with him, let 'em think that he drank himself full and croaked on the road."

"But you didn't ... well, now? ... You didn't do for him?"

"Well, now, there's foolish talk! If there'd only been some reason. He was a harmless fellow. Altogether like a little lamb. It must be just that his turn came."

"And didn't he find a place where to die! Couldn't he have thought up something worse?" said the one who was in the red shirt.

"Right you are, there!" seconded the other. "Lived to grin and died in sin. Well, let's go, mate, what?"

The cadets ran with all their might. Now, in the darkness, the figure of Roly-Poly drawn up on the floor, with his blue face, appeared before them in all the horror that the dead possess for early youth; and especially if recalled at night, in the dark.

CHAPTER IV.

A fine rain, like dust, obstinate and tedious, had been drizzling since morning. Platonov was working in the port at the unloading of watermelons. At the mill, where he had since the very summer proposed to establish himself, luck had turned against him; after a week he had already quarreled, and almost had a fight, with the foreman, who was extremely brutal with the workers. About a month Sergei Ivanovich had struggled along somehow from hand to mouth, somewheres in the back-yards of Temnikovskaya Street, dragging into the editorial rooms of The Echoes, from time to time, notes of street accidents or little humorous scenes from the court rooms of the justices of the peace. But the hard newspaper game had long ago grown distasteful to him. He was always drawn to adventures, to physical labour in the fresh air, to life completely devoid of even the least hint at comfort; to care-free vagabondage, in which a man, having cast from him all possible external conditions, does not know himself what is going to be with him on the morrow. And for that reason, when from the lower stretches of the Dnieper the first barges with watermelons started coming in, he willingly entered a gang of labourers, in which he was known even from last year, and loved for his merry nature, for his comradely spirit, and for his masterly ability of keeping count.

This labour was carried on with good team work and with skill. Four parties, each of five men, worked on each barge. Number one would reach for a watermelon and pa.s.s it on to the second, who was standing on the side of the barge. The second cast it to the third, standing already on the wharf; the third threw it over to the fourth; while the fourth handed it up to the fifth, who stood on a horse cart and laid the watermelons away--now dark-green, now white, now striped--into even glistening rows. This work is clean, lively, and progresses rapidly.

When a good party is gotten up, it is a pleasure to see how the watermelons fly from hand to hand, are caught with a circus-like quickness and success, and anew, and anew, without a break, fly, in order to fill up the dray. It is only difficult for the novices, that have not as yet gained the skill, have not caught on to that especial sense of the tempo. And it is not as difficult to catch a watermelon as to be able to throw it.

Platonov remembered well his first experiences of last year. What swearing--virulent, mocking, coa.r.s.e--poured down upon him when for the third or fourth time he had been gaping and had slowed up the pa.s.sing: two watermelons, not thrown in time, had smashed against the pavement with a succulent crunch, while the completely lost Platonov dropped the one which he was holding in his hands as well. The first time they treated him gently; on the second day, however, for every mistake they began to deduct from him five kopecks per watermelon out of the common share. The following time when this happened, they threatened to throw him out of the party at once, without any reckoning. Platonov even now still remembered how a sudden fury seized him: "Ah, so? The devil take you!" he had thought. "And yet you want me to be chary of your watermelons? So then, here you are, here you are! ..." This flare-up helped him as though instantaneously. He carelessly caught the watermelons, just as carelessly threw them over, and to his amazement suddenly felt that precisely just now he had gotten into the real swing of the work with all his muscles, sight, and breathing; and understood, that the most important thing was not to think at all of the watermelons representing some value, and that then everything went well. When he, finally, had fully mastered this art, it served him for a long time as a pleasant and entertaining athletic game of its own kind. But that, too, pa.s.sed away. He reached, in, the end, the stage where he felt himself a will-less, mechanical wheel in a general machine consisting of five men and an endless chain of flying watermelons.

Now he was number two. Bending downward rhythmically, he, without looking, received with both hands the cold, springy, heavy watermelon; swung it to the right; and, also almost without looking, or looking only out of the corner of his eye, tossed it downward, and immediately once again bent down for the next watermelon. And his ear seized at this time how smack-smack ...smack-smack...the caught watermelons slapped in the hands; and immediately bent downwards and again threw, letting the air out of himself noisily--ghe...ghe...

The present work was very profitable; their gang, consisting of forty men, had taken on the work, thanks to the great rush, not by the day but by the amount of work done, by the waggon load. Zavorotny, the head--an enormous, mighty Poltavian--had succeeded with extreme deftness in getting around the owner; a young man, and, to boot, in all probability not very experienced as yet. The owner, it is true, came to his senses later and wanted to change the stipulations; but experienced melon growers dissuaded him from it in time: "Drop it. They'll kill you," they told him simply and firmly. And so, through this very stroke of good luck every member of the gang was now earning up to four roubles a day. They all worked with unusual ardour, even with some sort of vehemence; and if it had been possible to measure with some apparatus the labour of each one of them, then, in all probability, the number of units of energy created would have equalled the work of a large Voronezhian train horse.

However, Zavorotny was not satisfied even with this--he hurried and hurried his lads on all the time. Professional ambition was speaking within him; he wanted to bring the daily earnings of every member of the gang up to five roubles per snout. And gaily, with unusual ease, twinkled from the harbour to the waggon, twirling and flashing, the wet green and white watermelons; and their succulent plashing resounded against accustomed palms.

But now a long blast sounded on the dredging machine in the port. A second, a third, responded to it on the river; a few more on sh.o.r.e; and for a long time they roared together in a mighty chorus of different voices.

"Ba-a-a-st-a-a!" hoa.r.s.ely and thickly, exactly like a locomotive blast, Zavorotny started roaring.

And now the last smack-smack--and the work stopped instantaneously.