“The apothecary? He was in a bad way. The poor fellow was tearing along the post-road with express horses. They rushed him along like mad, and he didn’t know himself what for! ‘What it was all about,’ said he, ‘I can’t make out. I can’t understand anything about it.’ Those are the very words he said to me afterwards.... ‘When I got to Moscow,’ said he, ‘I went and took lodgings, and settled my business, and bought some things, and made the pills’; but something or other kept him, so that he couldn’t come to the tavern to meet me. He missed seeing me, and he hadn’t got my address; so he packed up the box of pills, and wrote my name on the packet, thinking he’d send them off next day. Just as he had finished doing that—it was in the evening time—one of his friends came in and said— “‘Let’s go and hear the harp-playing girls outside the town.’ “‘All right.’ “So they took a _drozhki_, and off they went. Well, of course they took some of these sewing-girls with them for company, as any bachelors would.... So they drank, and larked about, and enjoyed themselves; and my apothecary came home as drunk as a lord. As soon as he got in, he just threw himself down on his bed and snored. All of a sudden some one began banging and hammering at the door as hard as they could; and as tight as he was, it woke him up. Well, he woke up and opened the door; and in came that very same Mediterranean squadron.[54] “‘Come with us, please.’ “‘Where to?’ “‘You’ll see.’ “‘But why, for mercy’s sake? What about?’ “‘You’ll know when you get there.’ “My apothecary began blustering at them in his tipsy way; but they only told him, ‘It’ll be the worse for you; you’d better come quietly.’ So there was nothing for it; he had to dress and go. He thought he’d best hide those pills before he started; but they asked him— “‘What’s that parcel?’ “‘That?’ says he; oh, that’s nothing!’ “They saw he wanted to hide something from them, and caught hold of the parcel; but he was afraid to let them have it. Supposing any one should analyze the pills!... There was poison in them, and his name was written on the box. ‘And I was afraid,’ he told me afterwards, ‘to leave them in the lodgings either. Supposing anybody should take a fancy to them and swallow them, there’d be the devil to pay then!’ So he tried to hide the box up his sleeve; but they didn’t give him the chance. The end of it was that one of his visitors hit him on the shoulder, and the box tumbled out of his sleeve; and they picked it up, and marched him away. They took him to their central office; and in less than half-an-hour’s time some one came up to him, asked his name, bundled him into a _troika_,[55] and—off!” “What a disgraceful business! How could such a thing happen?” exclaimed one of the officers. “It must have been some absurd mistake.” “Of course it was a mistake! Things like that always are mistakes. But who it was that made the mistake, that we don’t know to this day.”