Charles had another experience that the guards did not know about. He recalled that his mother use to take him to the reptile house at the little zoo when you was young. Thursdays were his favorite visits, because that was feeding day for the snakes. He remembered from his youth that it took about fifteen minutes for a snake to strike and slowly gnaw a mouse into its dislocated jaw to swallow. A rattlesnake cannot bite if it is in the middle of eating a field mouse, or rat. Charles suspected the dead man from the cell was in too much in a hurry and could not get his hand out quickly enough to avoid the poisonous bite.
The guards must have fed the snake when Charles was outside during his afternoon fresh air excursions. That is the only explanation he could think of as to how the snake survived the winter months. The riddle was making sense. He knew he had to find a mouse to feed the rattlesnake before the guards gave it a meal.
Charles thought of a clever way to catch a field mouse. He would lie down in the grass and pray that a mouse would smell the aroma from the smelly cheese in his pocket. He did this for weeks. Finally, as he lay on his back he took a cup from his cell room and slowly lowered it onto a field mouse that was chewing the stale cheese from his pocket. Now he had another key to the safe, but a few questions remained. One, what was behind the rattlesnake in a red velvet bag? Two, how was he going to get past the guard and enter the streets of St. Petersburg? He contemplated this for a week.
Later, the guard slipped some timely news to Charles. The stage coach to Siberia was leaving on Monday, and he had orders to put Charles on the coach. This was certain death, because if you leave for Siberia you do not return. The government puts you in a work camp and works you until you literally fall down to your death. He decided to find out what was in the red velvet bag on Sunday night, the beginning of a new week. A new chapter was soon to be written. It was sink, swim, or be bitten. Charles opened the first key, the wooden horizontal panel. Then the mouse dropped into the box and the snake swallowed the creature giving Charles about fifteen minutes to remove the red velvet bag from the box that housed the snake which was the second key. The third key stumped Charles for a long time that evening. He remembered what the royal court told him just before his incarceration, that HRH Catherine the Great would not tell him the answer. He knew that what the Queen said was rule. Charles went to the door and opened it. Looking back inside the prison cell, he noticed a full moon resting perfectly inside the frame of the window on the south wall. He knew it was about two in the morning by now. It was time to see the contents of the velvet bag from the snake pit which contained all the gems that belonged to Charles in the first place! He smiled and laughed as he tiptoed past the guard. Then he paused knowing that if he left quietly, he would surely get the guard to gather his team of guards to chase after Charles. He could not believe what he was going to do. Without saying a word, he gently got down on his knees and woke the guard. He quickly took one of the smaller diamonds and placed it in the guard's hand and clasped all fingers together into a ball. He was betting that the royal court would let him go free if he had the smarts to retrieve his own gem collection. The guard smiled and went back to sleep without making a sound.
Charles had just minutes to maneuver around town to get to the station before sunrise. He knew the stage coach routes and times. It was this time during his escape that he changed his name from Charles Jacob Sigismund Thiel to Charles Cist. He took the C from Charles, the J in Latin became an I, S from Sigismund, T from Thiel, thus the surname Cist was born. This proved to be beneficial because the authorities were looking for Mr. Thiel that ends with a T. The new name Cist shuffled him to different alphabetical groups when rounded up during check points through out Europe looking for fugitives. (My father mentioned that any person in the world is directly descended from Charles Cist)
Andrew C. Allen 4/16/13
513.638.7140
pewabic34@gmail.com
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