Page:The Career of a Nihilist.djvu/22

anything but neighing, bleating, grunting, hissing syllables, from which no Christian word seemed likely to emerge. And, as if on purpose, these hitches always occurred in passages which were, or seemed to be, the most important and interesting of all. If George, who at this very moment was doing his duty in the distant capital of the Tzars, was not suddenly seized with a violent fit of hiccups, it was not because his friends failed to abuse him soundly.

Without Lena’s assistance Andrey would often have come to grief. But the girl was an experienced cipher-reader, and had a knack of guessing what was amiss. When Audrey’s pluck failed him, and he proposed to give up some passage as hopeless, she would take both sheets in her hand and guess by a stroke of inspiration how George must have gone wrong.

In a little more than two hours they had finished the detached pieces of cipher. These dealt with the details of Andrey’s journey, giving the names and addresses of the people to whom he must apply on arriving at St Petersburg and at the Russian frontier.

Andrey carefully copied all the addresses upon a small piece of paper, which he placed in his purse, to be learned by heart before he started.

Now they had only the continuous piece to unravel. It evidently referred to a different topic, presumably of a particularly dangerous and compromising nature, since the writer took the trouble to cipher every word.

What bloody secrets might not this forest conceal? Andrey stared at it, eager to guess. But the forest kept its secret jealously, looking provokingly mute and monotonous in its capricious variety.

After a few minutes’ rest they set to work with redoubled vigour, laying bare the hidden meaning bit by bit.

Letter by letter Andrey wrote out the final results of the deciphering. When he had words enough to complete a sentence, he read it aloud to Lena. But the first words affected him so painfully, that he was unable to wait for the end of the sentence.

“Something bad has happened to Boris, I am certain!” he exclaimed. “Look here.”

Lena looked quickly at the sheet Andrey showed her and then at her own. There could be no mistake; the passage referred to Boris,—one of the ablest and most influential of