The actual tramping in the city was over, and I was back in my own quarters again, cleaned up and respectable. One night, three of us, an Englishman, myself and another American, started out to see the city on conventional lines. My tramp experience had not revealed much to me about the local night life, and I boldly took advantage of the opportunity offered by the American's invitation to see the town as he knew it. In the end, there was not much to see that I had not looked at time and again in other cities, but before the end came there was a little adventure that proved very amusing. During our stroll together the Englishman, a diminutive little chap who had just bought a new pot hat and wanted everybody to know it, got separated from us. We looked high and low up and down the street where we had missed him, but he could not be found. We were about to go to the police station and give an alarm, when, as we were passing a rather dark stairway, who should come shooting down it but the Briton, his hat all battered in and his face bleeding. "Look at my new Lincoln and Bennett, will you?" he snarled, on reaching the street, "Sixteen bob gone to the devil!" We asked him what the row had been about. He didn't know. He merely remembered that he had gone up the stairs and had been politely received at the door. "I went into the parlor," he said, "called for drinks, and sat down. After a while I thought it would be fun to open my umbrella and hold it over my head. I guess the light must have dazzled me. The next thing, I was shooting down those stairs. They're bally quick here with their bouncer, ain't they!" The American was strong in Russian, and also stood well with the police in his district, and he was determined that the proprietor of the establishment should give an account of himself. While he and the Englishman went up the stairs I remained below in the street, according to agreement, and called at the top of my voice for a _gvardovoi_ (policeman). Two _dvorniks_ (gate-keepers, but also police underlings) came running up, and most obsequiously begged the _gospodeen_ to tell them what was the matter. Forgetting their police power, I pushed one of them aside, declaring that I wanted a patrolman and not a house porter. General Kleigels, himself, could not have taken umbrage at my indiscretion any more hot-headedly. The _dvorniks_ reached for me instantly, but I ran up the steps to get under the sheltering wing of the American. The _dvorniks_ followed me, and there was a long, heated discussion, but in the end I had to go to the police station, where I absolutely refused to say a single word. The officer searched me, finding in one of my coat pockets the little Englishman's card. He rubbed it on my nose, saying: "_Vasch? Vasch?_" (Yours? Yours?) but I held my tongue and temper. The man never looked into my hip pockets. In one of them I had a well-filled cardcase, and in the other might have carried a revolver.