THE RUSSIAN DETECTIVE.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1130, 27 October 1893, Page 10

THE RUSSIAN DETECTIVE.

A TRUE STORY. (Vienna Correspondent, London Telboraph.) Kaffsky was a born genius, destined in time to soar to the dizzy heights of a professional chair. So at least said his professors at the of St Petersburg ; and, considering that they had seen so much of him during his four years' studentlife, they ought to know. We students, likewise, held him in awe, and hedged him round with reverential ostracism. That was our way of dealing with the few men who went in for 'hard work,'as they called it—we kept them at a respectful distance and tabooed them. The fact is we heartily despised the mean wretches who thus sacrificed the glorious cause of humanity to crass egotism, and sat down quietly to work for themselves at a time when society was going to pieces. That same Kaffsky, for instance, used to squander his days and nights over mathematics and chemistry and half a dozen kindred soiences, as if life were to last for eternity. We did not believe in a man having so many irons in the fire, and we limited our own efforts to the accomplishment of one single task—the regeneration of mankind, as a preliminary step to the remodelling of Russian society. But for this we grudged no sacrifice, not even that of our ardent desire for self-reformation.

Kaffsky never fell in with these views, and you ha-J only to look in his face to see that he had little sympathy with them. He was a low-sized, squarely-built man, of sallow complexion, whose flowing beard, had it been grey instead of jet black, would have given him the appearance of a venerable sage, a Russian Zoroaster ; for, even as it was, he seemed quite old enough to be his own father. Still, for all his exterior coldness, you. might detect in his black melancholy eyes unmistakable signs of latent lightnings, which on occasion would flash forth with effect. Long before this we had weighed Kaffsky in the political balance—the only one in vogue at Russian Universities ten years ago—and had found him sadly wanting. He was a member of none of the*three churches outside of which there is no salvation —that of the sworn conspirators, who edited a forbidden political journal, ' Land and Liberty,' hatched plots against the State, and sometimes helped to carry them out; that of unsworn conspirators. from whom the former were usually recruited ; and the bulk of students who sympathised with everything and everybody who embarrassed the Government. Kaffsky held aloof from us all; never took part in skhodky (illegal meetings), attended lectures with exasperating regularity, talked with his professors on a footing of equality, and was now within four weeks of obtaining his degree and receiving a post at the University which would enable him to qualify for a chair. And to crown all we had just heard of his impending marriage. ' A nice time to be thinking of marrying and feathering his nest 1' we remarked to each other, ' just when the pillars of the social edifice are giving way and we are doing our beßt to pull them down, in order to build up something better.' But Kaffsky alwalß was a selfish, cold, conceited dog. ■ When the name of his future Mde was mentioned, those among us who Sew her were staggered a bit. Anna FavloAa Smirnova was not a Venus. But if she lad much less beauty than her photograph—which is a common failing of women—she had a good deal more wit, which is not by any means* so common. Although apparently young enough to be his daughter, Anna Pavlovna was Kaffsky's senior by five or six years, and, to make matters still more mixed, she was a red Radical at heart. Formerly her democratic views had got her into hot water with the authorities, and it was not without considerable difficulty that she had obtained her present position as teacher in a girls' Gymnasx. which enabled her to live in modest competency with her A-idowed mother. What bewitched Kaffsky in her, or what attracted her to him, was a dark mystery to us who knew them both. Nor was it the only mystery about the man. The police, we knew, had twice or thrice made elaborate inquiries about him ; had noted his comings in and goings out, and had set a watch upon his actions. Platoff, when arrested a week ago, chanced to have Kaffsky's card in his pocket, and was subjected to a long secret cross-examination about his dealings with him. We burst out laughing when told of this. ' The Secret Police must be off their heads altogether,' said Alexeieff. 'As well suspect the atone Sphinxes at the Nikolai Bridge, as the piece of stuck-up selfishness called Kaffsky' exclaimed Lavroff; ' but I confess I should enjoy seeing him nabbed and doubled-up in a " secret "in the fortress. It would teach him to think a little of those who suffer there.' ' There must be some reason for the suspicion,' cried Brodsky, the cleverest and most respected student amongst the Radical set; 'there's always fire where there's smoke, and as we know there's no fire here, then there cannot possibly be any real smoke. It's a matter of smoked-glass spec tacles.'™ This remark struck us all as the acme of cleverness. It was warmly applauded. • Well, but who can have smoked the Government's spectacles ?' somebody asked. 'Ah, that's a question which each one must solve for himself,' was the reply. ' Boorman, Boorman ; he alone has a grudge against Kaffsky !' cried half a dozen voices. Boorman entered the room shortly afterwards, and silence fell upon us all.

Now, none of us had a doubt that he was the Judas Iscariot. Our very eyes told us that Nature intended him for nothing else. His hang-dog expression, his slouching gait, his furtive glance, and stammering delivery, proclaimed the nature of the spirit that lived and worked within him. We had reasons plentiful as blackberries for suspecting Boorman, but conclusive proof we had none. Still, we regarded him as a marked man, the discovery of whose body in a ditch or a well would have provoked neither sorrow nor surprise, for he was, or had been, in the counsels of the Terrorists, and they never forgave or forgot. The present case

strengthened our suspicion, for Boorman and Kaffsky had quarrelled yeaTS before at the Gymnasy, and although they were on speaking terms at the University there was no doubt that their hatred was as strong as ever.

'I he days glided rapidly by; the warm, sunny days, followed by the lightsome nights, which make St Petersburg a Paradise during the latter end of May. Summer vacations were at hand. The last of the examinations would take place in ten days, and then we should disperse over the length and breadth of the empire, many of us never to return again. Suddenly we were stunned and stupefied by a bolt from the blue in the shape of a rumour that Kaffsky had been arrested. ' Kaffsky ?' ' Rubbish!'' Where ? ' •When?' 'For what?' Were our first exclamations. At first the answers were contradictory. Then they gradually converged in this brief account of the matter : He and Alexeieff had gone to the theatre the night before. They had walked home together and made an appointment for the morrow at the University ; but at about two a.m. Kaffsky had been spirited away, and was now in the secret wing of the Lithuanian fortress. * Incredible 1 ' ' Private vengeance !' ' The Secret Police are mad !' were some of our commentaries on the narrative.

A written request was presented by some of the professors, who were beside themselves with indignation, that Kaffsky should be released on bail, just to finish his examinations and take his degree ; for they knew very well it was all a misunderstanding, or else a base plot, hatched by a private enemy. 'lt will be all ground up fine and come out as flour in the end,' they remarked, in the words of the Russian proverb. But to our utter astonishment their request was refused, and Kaffsky was removed from the Lithuanian fortress, only to be immured in the more terrible Fortress of Peter and Paul. The rector was next asked to intercede for him ; but, in spite of his proverbial readiness to shield his subjects, he counselled patience, and thereby angered the whole body of the students.

For the excitement caused by the arrest was assuming dangerous proportions. Nobody had cared a rap for Kaffsky a week before, and he was already a most popular hero now. People who had never previously seen or heard of him went about preaching ■ vengeance. None of us could have accounted for this rapid change if we had been calm enough to notice it. It was not because of the man's loss of liberty, nor of the loss of his degree, although that was much more serious, nor yet by reason of the hindered marriage. Perhaps it was hatred for the heartless informer—who had also been arrested, no doubt to save him from being lynched—and sympathy for Anna Pavlovna, whose womanly feelings had got the better of all her philosophy. She had completely broken down. One of the professors had been to see her, and the story he told us would have melted the of soul the stoniest Stoic. She had taken to her bed, had refused all food, had forwarded petition after petition to the Minister of the Interior, and when it became clear that she might as well be sowing salt on the sea shore, her mind gave way. Tho doctors sent her mother and herself in posthaste to the Crimea, while there was still some faint glimmer of hope that she might be rescued from the mad house and the grave. It was at this conjuncture that we set out on our long vacations. In October a few of us met together in St Petersburg once more—but only a few. The police had made a tremendous haul among the students the day the University had closed last session, and man/ were now in their distant native villages, expelled from the University ; others in prison, others again on the road to Siberia. Kaffsky, we learned, was among the latter—condemned to the Mines as a dangerous conspirator, in spite of the intercession of professors ; Anna Pavlovna was dead, according to some accounts, mad, according to others ; but it cdme to pretty much the same thing in the end.

I had heard of many evil things done by diabolical informers, but this was the most crying injustice I had ever actually witnessed; and when talking with a friend who was a relative of one of the Ministers, I told him so. He was astounded at what I told him, and asked me to draw up an account of Kaffsky's case in writing. He would see, he said, that justice should be done. I had no difficulty in obtaining precise particulars ; I discovered, even, the nameof the forwarding prison, over a thousand miles away, in which Kaffsky was at that moment interned, and, having made out a very strong case, I gave my friend the paper, and he presented it to his relative the Minister.

A week passed, then a fortnight, and still there was no answer. ' There are no return tickets to Siberia, and it takes a long time to print one,' said a sympathising friend of mine. I fancied that the first tidings I should hear of the matter would be Kaffsky's apparition in the coffee-room of the University. But it wasn't. One day my philanthropic friend shook his head, said my data were all wrong, that Kaffsky was the most dangerous conspirator that had ever been tripped up in the very nick of time, and that he would advise me to keep aloof from political reformers in future, as it was evident they could make black appear white without an effort. I replied that the authorities were evidently past masters in the self-same art, if I might judge by their new convictions. He was silent, and I went mournfully away. Six years later I heard that Kaffsky was no more. He had died of disease, or was shot in a tumult, or disposed of in some such way. The particulars were not very precise ; but he was really dead, that was certain. ' Nothing else but death is certain in Russia,' I remarked to an ex-Minister to whom I had been telling the whole story after dinnsr. ' So you are going to write about it, you say ?' he asked me,' to ease your feelings.'' lam,' I replied. ' Very well, then, if you come here in two or three days I will supply you with a most interesting postscript.' And he did. His statement was" based on official documents, and this is a gist of it. ' W hen the Terrorist movement was at its height the leaders were invisible and übiquitous. We suspected that they were in the University, but that was only a guess. Once or twice

Kaffsky appeared to be in the movement, but we had no proof and could get none. It then occurred to General 0., of the Secret Department, to employ a spy who had never played the part of a detective before.' * I know. You mean the scoundrelly in former, Boorman,' I broke in. ' Boorman ? Boorman ? Was he ? Oh, of course he was. Yes. No ; Boorman was not the detective ; Boorman, I see, was nearly as dangerous as Kaffsky ; he was Kaffsky's right-hand man, and he got the same punishment.' This announcement took my breath away, but it only deepened the mystery. ' Two thousand three hundred roubles was what it all cost, and dirt cheap, too,' he went on. • You mean the detective's reward 1 ' I asked. ' Yes ; that of course was over and above her regular salary, which was fifty roubles a month. It was the only stroke of clever business she ever did.' ' She ?' I repeated ; ' was it a woman then 1' ' Oh, yes : didn't I tell you ?—and a woman with the makings of a saint in her, too. Ha, ha, ha ! She is now a God fearing sectarian—a pietist of of some kind.' ' Well,' I remarked, ' she would need a good long course of penance, were it only to atone for the fate of poor Anna Pavlovna, whose life she snuffed out.' ' Ha, ha, ha 1' he laughed till the big tears rolled down his furrowed cheek. ' Why, hang it, man, Anna Pavlovna was herself the detective. She played Dalilah to Kaffsky s Samson, and delivered him into the hands of the Philistines. But, as I was saying, that was the only clever thing she ever did. > s he soon after left the service, found salvation, as they term it, in some obscure sect, and is a pious bigot now.'