The Mission of Poubalov — page 155: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE GHOST OF POUBALOPD. 151 CHAPTER XIX. THE GHOST OF POUBALOV. Litizki laid the newspaper down and tried to reflect. He had not slept at all since he awoke from a very brief nap in New York the morning before; therefore, he had not dreamed the scene in the drawing-room car. With his own hand he had actually struck Poubalov to the heart, and his victim had fallen with the gasp and shudder of death. This was so, and no newspaper could make it other- wise; but how should it happen that the reporters had missed the episode? | -- Jt had happened upon a railroad train; what more prob- able, then, than that the railroad officials had suppressed the news? He bad read many accounts of accidents in which the reporters set forth the reticence of officials and employees. ‘‘They imagine,’’ thought Litizki, ‘‘that it is not for their interest to let the public know that so violent a crime, so they would call it, could be committed in one of their high-toned cars, and that, moreover, the murderer could escape. ’’ This thought appeased for a moment the new fear that threatened to unman him for all time, the fear that he had failed! Though he openly and emphatically repudi- ated all superstitions, and boasted over and again that his life and views were ruled by reason alone, he was yet sub- ject to influences that, if they were not superstitions, were remarkably like them. Among these were his esti- mate of Poubalov, whose invincibility seemed to surpass human powers and attributes. Litizki was conscious of this tendency to surround the spy with a supernatural at- mosphere, and he struggled against it, the result of his struggle invariably being his deeper self-abasement as he GOMIIGIOOKS (€@) im