...of secrecy

Delighted and amused by his own cleverness and at the others' stupidity, Nicolas Tarabas left the train the following morning after a sound and undisturbed night's sleep. Hardly two versts separated him now from his father's house. At any rate the station-master, the ticket-collector, and the porters recognised and greeted him. He answered their numerous and friendly questions with official portentousness to the effect that he had been recalled from America by orders from the highest places and for an errand of the most vital urgency. This sentence he kept repeating again and again with the same warm smile and the same bright candour in his child-like blue eyes. When this and that one asked him if he had announced his coming at home, Tarabas put his finger to his lips. The gesture exhorted silence and awoke respect. And as, without luggage, exactly as he was when he left New York, he left the station and set off down the narrow path which led to the Tarabas demesne, the station employers, one after the other, laid their fingers on their lips exactly as he had done and all of them were firmly convinced that Nicolas Tarabas, known to them since his babyhood, was now the bearer of a momentous state secret.

[Tarabas: A Guest On Earth, Roth, J.]