Out of Russia

The professor was pottering about his laboratory. He called it a laboratory, this work-room down in New Jersey, where he was peacefully ending his days, but it was not such in the ordinary acceptation of the term. The brightly burning lights shone on no apparatus for distilling evil-smelling gases, no glass retorts, no long lines of bottles. What instruments it disclosed were of a kind more likely to appeal to a sailor than to a chemist, though many of them would probably have seemed odd to both. A lead-line with “marks” and “deeps,” various scoop nets, a long sectional aquarium in which various sea creatures moved, barometers, anemometers, and other “meters” for measuring winds and waters, a great globe, and piles of charts, were some of the articles the room contained, for this was the workshop of Professor Shishkin, the great Russian physicist, member of scores of learned societies, and the ultimate authority on the waves, winds, currents, flora, and fauna of the ocean.

The Professor had come to America about twenty years before, bringing with him a young daughter, a working knowledge of the English language, and a profound acquaintance with the ocean. He had secured a post in a small school, from which he had gone from one college to another, all the while growing in reputation until he came to be probably the best known physicist in the world. When he came to America, he was apparently about fifty years of age, but where and how he had passed those fifty years he never told. Obviously, he must have been a student if not a professor, and it seemed strange that one with his attainments could have lived for half a century unnoticed; yet of his early life no trace was to be had. His name did not appear on the rolls of any of the great European universities; and even after he grew to distinction, no alma mater claimed him for her own. Deliberately he had cut himself off from his early life. To him, the past was dead.

But the past is never really dead. Its beginnings are untraceable, and its ending must ever be unknown. Men put their finger on some turning point in their lives and say, “Here this began,” or, “Here that ended.” Wrong in both assertions! The beginning began long before, and the ending will not end even when R.I.P. is graven on their tombstones. At the very moment when Professor Shishkin was congratulating himself on the peaceful afternoon of his life, strenuous fate was on its way in the darkness of that March evening to call him again to action.

The avatar of fate was one who would attract attention even in New York, that melting pot of the nations. Carelessly dressed, dark, with high cheek-bones and glowing eyes, even the casual might pronounce him a fanatic who was living on his nerves and declare that some day the nerves would burn out and the man collapse.

At the door he gave his name to Olga Shishkin, the Professor’s daughter, now grown to womanhood, and she took it to the Professor in his laboratory.

The Professor was puzzled. “Maxime Gorloff,” he repeated doubtfully. “I don’t recall the name. Did he say what he wanted, Olga?”

Olga shook her head. “No,” she answered. “Only that he wanted to see the distinguished Professor. He seemed very much in earnest. He speaks English well, but with an accent. I think he must be an immigrant.”

“An immigrant! Eh?” The Professor did not measure men by the price of their steamer passages. “Well, show him in. I am always glad to talk with strangers, especially if they are very much in earnest. They usually have a new point of view and can teach me something. Show him in.”

The man came in. If a shade of disappointment crossed his face as he noted the Professor’s white hair and wasted limbs, it disappeared as he returned the latter’s courteous greeting. “I have come many miles to see you, Professor,” he declared quietly, as he took the chair proffered.

“So!” The Professor preened himself with harmless vanity. People often came many miles to see and consult him. “Many miles!” he repeated. “That means so different a thing to-day than it did when I was young. Fifty miles were very many in those days.”

The man Maxime nodded understandingly. “And four thousand is many to-day; yes! Moscow is four thousand miles away.”