Chita had become a city. It was built of the tears and anguish, of bodies destroyed and minds wrecked, of hates and cruelties, all mixed with the bricks and logs of its walls. And limitless legions of human beings had been poured into the wilderness and their bodies used as fertilizer to build up a new empire for the rulers of Russia. “Oh, you cry for justice!” he said to the spirits of those who had suffered. “The time has come for justice—you have waited long, but to-morrow will not be as yesterday!” He turned from the window and took his belt and pistol from the writing table and strapped them about him. Then he turned on the shaded droplight. It threw down upon the cloth of the writing table a yellow cone of radiance. It was now five by his watch. He rang the bell thrice—the signal for Vashka, as Katerin called herself. He sat down by the table and waited. The sound of people walking about in the hall furtively, came to his ears, with the careful opening and closing of doors and snatches of conversation. He heard the strains of an old Russian air played on a violin by some one on the floor above, and the regular pounding of feet as if the steps of a Cossack dance were being tried intermittently. It was the hour of the evening when the people in the hotel began to bestir themselves for the gay times of the night. They kept hidden during the day, and went abroad under cover of darkness to the restaurants of the city, to return to their rooms in the early morning. The men who lived in the hotel were mostly officers who were attached to the Ataman’s army, judging from those Peter had seen about the halls. The women were a flashy lot—women who had drifted up the railroad from Vladivostok or Harbin, and women of the sort that has the best of everything in times of famine and disorder. They were the parasites who seem to thrive best in times of disaster, and who get the most out of life when there are no laws of restraint. When they have acquired some amount of treasure, they are robbed and abandoned. Katerin was at the door in response to the signal by bell with amazing promptitude. She entered without knocking, and closed the door behind her softly. She stood for a minute, a vague shadow in the gloom outside the zone of the shaded lamp. Peter rose and moved toward her. “Thank you for coming,” he said in a low voice in keeping with her secretive entrance. “Have you persuaded your father to tell me what I wish to know? Will he help me in my quest?” “If you still wish it,” she replied. “Please! Take the shade from the lamp—the darkness is not pleasant.” Peter caught a note of melancholy in her voice. She seemed to be discouraged, and his own hopeful attitude was somewhat chilled. “Has anything gone wrong?” he asked. “No, not unless it is wrong for us to involve you in the same dangers which face us. My father appears reluctant to put you into a situation the full danger of which may not be apparent to you, a stranger.”