“I am sure he gives you no trouble, ma’am,” said Edwards, who had seen something of the meek and submissive way the Russian conducted himself in his lodgings.

This she admitted, but promptly asked how she was to know she mightn’t have her throat cut some night?  And what was the use of her talking to him, when he didn’t know two words of a Christian language?

They gathered from this that the good woman had been lecturing her docile lodger, and had been seriously hurt because of his inattention.  However, she at last consented to give them the name of the particular public-house in which he was likely to be found, and they again set off in quest of him.

They found him easily.  He was seated in a corner of the crowded and reeking bar-room by himself, nursing a glass of gin-and-water with his two trembling hands.  When they entered, he looked up and regarded them with bleared, sunken eyes, evidently recognized them, and then turned away sullenly.

“Tell him I am not come to bully him,” said Brand quickly.  “Tell him I am come about some work.  I want a cabinet made by a first-class workman like himself.”

Edwards went forward and put his hand on the man’s shoulder and spoke to him for some time; then he turned to Brand.

“He says, ‘No use; no use.’  He cannot work any more.  They won’t give him help to kill Pavel Michaieloff.  He wishes to die.”

“Ask him, then, what the young lady who gave him her portrait will think of him if she hears he is in this condition.  Ask him how he has dared to bring her portrait into a place like this.”

When this was conveyed to Kirski, he seemed to arouse himself somewhat; he even talked eagerly for a few seconds; then he turned away again, as if he did not wish to be seen.

“He says,” Edwards continued, “that he has not, that he would not bring that portrait into any such place.  He was afraid it might be found—­it might be taken from him.  He made a small casket of oak, carved by his own hands, and lined it with zinc; he put the photograph in it, and hid himself in the trees of St. James’s Park—­at least, I imagine that St. James’s Park is what he means—­at night.  Then he buried it there.  He knows the place.  When he has killed Michaieloff he will come back and dig it up.”

“The poor devil—­his brain is certainly going, drink or no drink.  What is to be done with him, Edwards?”

“He says the young lady has gone away.  He cares for nothing.  He is of no use.  He despairs of getting enough money to take him back to Russia.”

After a great deal of persuasion, however, they got him to leave the public-house with them and return to his lodgings.  They got him some tea and some bread-and-butter, and made him swallow both.  Then Edwards, under his friend’s instructions, proceeded to impress on Kirski that the young lady was only away from London for a short time:  that she would be greatly distressed if she were to hear he had been