“Come and look at my view,” he said, “and see whether it isn’t splendid.”

He spoke no more than the truth.  We looked across the Canal over the roofs of the city—­domes and towers and turrets, grey and white and blue, with the dark red walls of many of the older houses stretched like an Arabian carpet beneath white bubbles of clouds that here and there marked the blue sky.  It was a scene of intense peace, the smoke rising from the chimneys, Isvostchicks stumbling along on the farther banks of the Canal, and the people sauntering in their usual lazy fashion up and down the Nevski.  Immediately below our window was a skating-rink that stretched straight across the Canal.  There were some figures, like little dolls, skating up and down, and they looked rather desolate beside the deserted band-stands and the empty seats.  On the road outside our door a cart loaded with wood slowly moved along, the high hoop over the horse’s back gleaming with red and blue.

“Yes, it is a view!” I said.  “Splendid!—­and all as quiet as though there’d been no disturbances at all.  Have you heard any news?”

“No,” said Bohun.  “To tell the truth I’ve been so busy that I haven’t had time to ring up the Embassy.  And we’ve had no one in this morning.  Monday morning, you know,” he added; “always very few people on Monday morning”—­as though he didn’t wish me to think that the office was always deserted.

I watched the little doll-like men circling placidly round and round the rink.  One bubble cloud rose and slowly swallowed up the sun.  Suddenly I heard a sharp crack like the breaking of a twig.  “What’s that?” I said, stepping forward on to the balcony.  “It sounded like a shot.”

“I didn’t hear anything,” said Bohun.  “You get funny echoes up here sometimes.”  We stepped back into Bohun’s room and, if I had had any anxieties, they would at once, I think, have been reassured by the unemotional figure of Bohun’s typist, a gay young woman with peroxide hair, who was typing away as though for her very life.

“Look here, Bohun, can I talk to you alone for a minute?” I asked.

The peroxide lady left us.

“It’s just about Markovitch I wanted to ask you,” I went on.  “I’m infernally worried, and I want your help.  It may seem ridiculous of me to interfere in another family like this, with people with whom I have, after all, nothing to do.  But there are two reasons why it isn’t ridiculous.  One is the deep affection I have for Nina and Vera.  I promised them my friendship, and now I’ve got to back that promise.  And the other is that you and I are really responsible for bringing Lawrence into the family.  They never would have known him if it hadn’t been for us.  There’s danger and trouble of every sort brewing, and Semyonov, as you know, is helping it on wherever he can.  Well, now, what I want to know is, how much have you seen of Markovitch lately, and has he talked to you?”