When he left I asked Makhalovsky to explain to me what happened to the Baroness.  He almost fainted.

“For heavens sake!  Don’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, all that in connection....

“Look here, Boris Platonovich,” I said, “You must not feel so terribly depressed about that story.  Nothing happened to Misha ...” and I continued in that tone of consolation, though I knew how weak the words sounded.

Mikhalovsky shook his head.  “Anyhow I won’t let it pass so easily.  I’ll try to know, and I’ll try to clear it out....”