Paul secured a chair in the long saloon car, and then returned to the
platform. The train waited twenty minutes for refreshments, and he still
had much to say to Steinmetz; for one of these men owned a principality
and the other governed it. They walked up and down the long platform,
smoking endless cigarettes, talking gravely.
Steinmetz stood on the platform and watched the train pass slowly away
into the night. Then he went toward a lamp, and taking a
pocket-handkerchief from his pocket, examined each corner of it in
succession. It was a small pocket-handkerchief of fine cambric. In one
corner were the initials S.S.B., worked neatly in white--such embroidery
as is done in St. Petersburg.
"Ach!" exclaimed Steinmetz shortly; "something told me that that was
he."
He turned the little piece of cambric over and over, examining it
slowly, with a heavy Germanic cunning. He had taken this handkerchief
from the body of the nameless rider who was now lying alone on the
steppe twelve miles away.
Steinmetz returned to the large refreshment room, and ordered the waiter
to bring him a glass of Benedictine, which he drank slowly and
thoughtfully.
Then he went toward the large black stove which stands in the railway
restaurant at Tver. He opened the door with the point of his boot. The
wood was roaring and crackling within.
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