“Very well, I will go,” consented Kennedy.

At the street door Kharkoff stopped short and drew Kennedy back.  “Look—­across the street in the shadow.  There is the man.  If I start toward him he will disappear; he is very clever.  He followed me from Saratovsky’s here, and has been waiting for me to come out.”

“There are two taxicabs waiting at the stand,” suggested Kennedy.  “Doctor, you jump in the first, and Jameson and I will take the second.  Then he can’t follow us.”

It was done in a moment, and we were whisked away, to the chagrin of the figure, which glided impotently out of the shadow in vain pursuit, too late even to catch the number of the cab.

“A promising adventure,” commented Kennedy, as we bumped along over New York’s uneven asphalt.  “Have you ever met Saratovsky?”

“No,” I replied dubiously.  “Will you guarantee that he will not blow us up with a bomb?”

“Grandmother!” replied Craig.  “Why, Walter, he is the most gentle, engaging old philosopher——­”

“That ever cut a throat or scuttled a ship?” I interrupted.

“On the contrary,” insisted Kennedy, somewhat nettled, “he is a patriarch, respected by every faction of the revolutionists, from the fighting organisation to the believers in non-resistance and Tolstoy.  I tell you, Walter, the nation that can produce a man such as Saratovsky deserves and some day will win political freedom.  I have heard of this Dr. Kharkoff before, too.  His life would be a short one if he were in Russia.  A remarkable man, who fled after those unfortunate uprisings in 1905.  Ah, we are on Fifth Avenue.  I suspect that he is taking us to a club on the lower part of the avenue, where a number of the Russian reformers live, patiently waiting and planning for the great ‘awakening’ in their native land.”

Kharkoff’s cab had stopped.  Our quest had indeed brought us almost to Washington Square.  Here we entered an old house of the past generation.  As we passed through the wide hall, I noted the high ceilings, the old-fashioned marble mantels stained by time, the long, narrow rooms and dirty-white woodwork, and the threadbare furniture of black walnut and horsehair.

Upstairs in a small back room we found the venerable Saratovsky, tossing, half-delirious with the fever, on a disordered bed.  His was a striking figure in this sordid setting, with a high intellectual forehead and deep-set, glowing coals of eyes which gave a hint at the things which had made his life one of the strangest among all the revolutionists of Russia and the works he had done among the most daring.  The brown dye was scarcely yet out of his flowing white beard—­a relic of his last trip back to his fatherland, where he had eluded the secret police in the disguise of a German gymnasium professor.

Saratovsky extended a thin, hot, emaciated hand to us, and we remained standing.  Kennedy said nothing for the moment.  The sick man motioned feebly to us to come closer.