Wallace Edgar
The Book of All-Power
CHAPTER XIII
CHERRY BIM MAKES A STATEMENT
Malcolm was awakened in the night by a scream. He sprang from the bench, his face bathed in perspiration.
"What was that?" he asked hoarsely.
Malinkoff was sitting on the edge of the bench rubbing his eyes.
"I heard something," he yawned.
Only Cheery Bim had not moved. He was lying on his back with his knees up and his hands behind his head, wide awake.
"What was it, Cherry?" asked Malcolm.
Slowly the little man rose and stretched himself.
"I wonder what the time is," he said evasively.
Malcolm looked at his watch.
"Half-past three," he replied.
"He's asleep anyway," said Cherry, nodding towards the recumbent figure of the priest. "He might have been useful—but I forgot the old man's a Jew."
"Do you mean–?" said Malinkoff and glanced at the gate.
Cherry nodded again.
"I never thought they'd carry it out according to programme," he said, "but they did. I heard 'em come in."
There was the thud of a door closing.
"That's the door of his cell. They have taken him out, I guess. The last fellow they killed in there they hung on a hook—just put a rope round his neck and pushed him in a bag. He was a long time dying," he said reflectively, and Malcolm saw that the little man's lower lip was trembling in spite of his calm, matter-of-fact tone.
Malinkoff had walked across to the priest, and had shaken him awake.
"Father," he said, "a man has just died in the next cell. Would you not read the Office of the Dead?"
The priest rose with an ill grace.
"Why should I be awakened from my sleep?" he complained. "Who is this man?"
"I do not know his name," said Malinkoff, "but he is a Jew–"
"A Jew!"
The priest spat on the ground contemptuously.
"What, I speak an office for a Jew?" he demanded, wrath in his face.
"For a man, for a human fellow creature," said Malinkoff sternly, but the priest had gone back to his hard couch, nor would he leave it, and Malinkoff, with a shrug of his shoulders, went back to his bed.
"That is Russia—eternal Russia," he said, and he spoke without bitterness. "Neither Czar nor Soviet will alter it."
They did not go to sleep again. Something was speaking to them from the next cell, something that whimpered and raised its hands in appeal, and they welcomed the daylight, but not the diversion which daylight brought. Again the door banged open, and this time a file of soldiers stood in the entrance.
"Boris Michaelovitch," said the dark figure in the entrance, "it is the hour!"
The priest rose slowly. His face was grey, the hands clasped together before him shook; nevertheless, he walked firmly to the door.
Before the soldiers had closed around him he turned and raised his hand in blessing, and Malinkoff fell upon his knees.
Again the door slammed and the bolts shot home, and they waited in silence.
There was no sound for ten minutes, then came a crash of musketry, so unexpected and so loud that it almost deafened them. A second volley followed, and after an interval a third, and then silence. Cherry Bim wiped his forehead.
"Three this morning," he said unsteadily. "Anyway, it's better than hanging."
There was a long pause, and then:
"Say," he said, "I'm sorry I said I was glad that guy was going."
Malcolm understood.
The day brought Irene at the same hour as on the previous afternoon. She looked around for the priest, and apparently understood, for she made no reference to the missing man.
"If you can get away from here," she said, "go to Preopojenski. That is a village a few versts from here. I tell you this, but–"
She did not complete her sentence, but Malcolm could guess from the hopeless despair in her voice.
"Excuse me, miss," interrupted Cherry Bim. "Ain't there any way of getting a gun for a man? Any old kind of gun," he said urgently; "Colt, Smith-Wesson, Browning, Mauser—I can handle 'em all—but Colt preferred."
She shook her head sadly.
"It is impossible," she said. "I am searched every time I come in through the lodge."
"In a pie," urged Cherry. "I've read in stories how you can get these things in a pie. Couldn't you make–"
"It's quite impossible," she said. "Even bread is cut into four pieces. That is done in the lodge."
Cherry Bim cast envious eyes on the tall guard at the doorway. He had a long revolver.
"I'll bet," said Cherry bitterly, "he don't know any more about a gun than a school-marm. Why, he couldn't hit a house unless he was inside of it."
"I must go now," said the girl hastily.
"Tell me one thing," said Malcolm. "You spoke yesterday of having one friend. Is that friend Israel Kensky?"
"Hush!" she said.
She took his hand in both of hers.
"Good-bye, Mr. Hay," she said. "I may not come to-morrow."
Her voice was hard and strained, and she seemed anxious to end the interview.
"Boolba told me this morning," she went on, speaking rapidly but little above a whisper, "that he had–certain plans about me. Good-bye, Mr. Hay!"
This time she shook hands with Malinkoff.
"Don't forget the village of Preopojensky," she repeated. "There is only the slightest chance, but if God is merciful and you reach the outside world, you will find the house of Ivan Petroff—please remember that." And in a minute she was gone.
"I wonder what was wrong," said Malcolm. "She was not so frightened when she came in, then she changed as though–"
Looking round he had seen, only for the fraction of a second, a hand through the grating over the bench. Someone had been listening in the next cell, and the girl had seen him. He sprang upon a bench and peered through, in time to see the man vanish beyond the angle of his vision. Malinkoff was lighting his last cigarette.
"My friend," he said, "I have an idea that in the early hours of the morning you and I will go the same way as the unfortunate priest."
"What makes you think so?" asked Malcolm quickly.
"Not only do I, but the Grand Duchess thinks so also," said Malinkoff. "Possibly this is news."
Again the door was opened, and this time it was an officer of the Red Guard who appeared. He had evidently been chosen because of his knowledge of English.
"I want the thief," he said tersely in that language.
"That sounds remarkably like me," said Cherry.
He put on his Derby hat slowly and went forth in his shirt-sleeves. They watched him through the window being taken across the courtyard and through the archway which led to the prison offices and the outer gate.
"They haven't released him, I suppose?" asked Malcolm, and Malinkoff shook his head.
"He is to be interrogated," he said. "Evidently there is something which Boolba wants to know about us, and which he believes this man will tell."
Malcolm was silent, turning matters over in his mind.
"He won't tell anything that will injure us," he said.
"But the man is a crook," said Malinkoff; "that is the word, isn't it?"
"That's the word," agreed Malcolm grimly, "but he's also a man of my own race and breed, and whilst I would not trust him with my pocket-book—or I should not have trusted him before I came in here—I think I can trust him with my life, supposing that he has my life in his hands."
In twenty minutes Cherry Bim was back, very solemn and mysterious until the gaoler was gone. Then he asked:
"Who is Israel Kensky, anyway?"
"Why?" asked Malcolm quickly.
"Because I'm going to make a statement about him—a written statement," he said cheerfully. "I'm going to have a room all to myself," he spoke slowly as though he were repeating something which he had already told himself, "because I am not a quick writer. Then I am going to tell all that she said about Israel Kensky."
"You can tell that in a second," said Malcolm sternly, and the little man raised a lofty hand.
"Don't get up in the air."
"Why have they sent you back now?"
"To ask a question or two," said Cherry.
He put on his coat, examined the interior of his hat thoughtfully, and jammed it down on his head.
"Ten minutes are supposed to elapse," he said melodramatically, "passed in light and airy conversation about a book—the 'Book of—of–"
"'All-Power'?" said Malcolm.
"That's the fellow. I should say it's the history of this darned place. Here they come."
He pulled down his coat, brushed his sleeves and stepped forward briskly to meet the English-speaking officer.
They passed an anxious two hours before he returned, and, if anything, he was more solemn than ever. He made no reply to their questions, but paced the room, and then he began to sing, and his tune had more reason than rhyme.
"Look through the grating," he chanted, "see if anybody is watching or listening, my honey, oh my honey!"
"There's nobody there," said Malcolm after a brief inspection.
"He'll be back again in five minutes," said Cherry, stopping his song and speaking rapidly. "I told him I wanted to be sure on one point, and he brought me back. I could have done it, but I wouldn't leave you alone."
"Done what?" asked Malcolm.
"Saved myself. Do you know what I saw when I got into that room for the first time? The guy in charge was locking away in a desk three guns and about ten packets of shells. It sounds like a fairy story, but it's true, and it's a desk with a lock that you could open with your teeth!"
It was Malinkoff who saw the possibilities of the situation which the man described.
"And they left you alone in the room?" he asked quickly.
"Sure," said Cherry. "Lift my hat, and lift it steady."
Malcolm pulled his hat up, and the butt of a revolver slipped out.
"There's a Browning there—be careful," said Cherry, ducking his head and pulling off his hat in one motion. "Here's the other under my arm," he put his hand beneath his coat and pulled out a Colt.
"Here are the shells for the automatic. I'll take the long fellow. Now listen, you boys," said Cherry. "Through that gateway at the end of the yard, you come to another yard and another gate, which has a guard on it. Whether we get away or whether we don't, depends on whether our luck is in or out."
"Look!" he whispered, "here comes Percy!"
The door swung open and the officer beckoned Cherry forward with a lift of his chin. Cherry walked toward him and the officer half turned in the attitude of one who was showing another out. Cherry's hand shot out, caught the man by the loose of his tunic and swung him into the room.
"Laugh and the world laughs with you," said Cherry, who had an assortment of literary quotations culled from heaven knows where. "Shout and you sleep alone!"
The muzzle of a long-barrelled '45 was stuck in the man's stomach. He did not see it, but he guessed it, and his hands went up.
"Tie him up—he wears braces," said Cherry. "I'll take that belt of deadly weapons." He pulled one revolver from the man's holster and examined it with an expert's eye. "Not been cleaned for a month," he growled; "you don't deserve to be trusted with a gun."
He strapped the belt about his waist and sighed happily.
They gagged the man with a handkerchief, and threw him ungently upon the bench before they passed through the open door to comparative freedom. Cherry locked and bolted the door behind them, and pulled down the outer shutter, with which, on occasions, the gaoler made life in the cells a little more unendurable by excluding the light. The cells were below the level of the courtyard, and they moved along the trench from which they opened.
Pacing his beat by the gateway was a solitary sentry.
"Stay here," whispered Cherry; "he has seen me going backward and forward, and maybe he thinks I'm one of the official classes."
He mounted the step leading up from the trench, and walked boldly toward the gateway. Nearing the man, he turned to wave a greeting to an imaginary companion. In reality he was looking to see whether there were any observers of the act which was to follow.
Watching him, they did not see exactly what had happened. Suddenly the soldier doubled up like a jack-knife and fell.
Cherry bent over him, lifted the rifle and stood it against the wall, then, exhibiting remarkable strength for so small a man, he picked up the man in his arms and dropped him into the trench which terminated at the gateway. They heard the thud of his body, and, breaking cover, they raced across the yard, joining Cherry, who led the way through the deep arch.
Now they saw the outer barrier. It consisted of a formidable iron grille. To their right was a gloomy building, which Malcolm judged was the bureau of the prison, to the left a high wall. On either side of the gateway was a squat lodge, and before these were half a dozen soldiers, some leaning against the gate, some sitting in the doorway of the lodges, but all carrying rifles.
"This way," said Cherry under his breath, and turned into the office.
The door of the room on his left was open, and into this they walked. It was empty, but scarcely had they closed the door than there were footsteps outside. Cherry, with a gun in each hand, a hard and ugly grin on his fat face, covered the door, but the footsteps passed.
There was a babble of voices outside and a rattle and creak of gates. Malcolm crept to the one window which the office held (he guessed it was here that Cherry had written his "statement"), and peeped cautiously forth.
A big closed auto was entering the gate, and he pulled his head back. Cherry was at his side.
"Somebody visiting—a fellow high up," whispered the latter hoarsely; "they'll come in here, the guy we left in the cell told me he'd want this room. Try that door!"
He pointed to a tall press and Malinkoff was there in a second. The press was evidently used for the storage of stationery. There was one shelf, half way up, laden with packages of paper, and Malinkoff lifted one end. The other slipped and the packets dropped with a crash. But the purring of the auto in the yard was noisy enough to drown the sound unless somebody was outside the door.
"Three can squeeze in—you go first, Mr. Hay."
It was more than a squeeze, it was a torture, but the door closed on them.
Malcolm had an insane desire to laugh, but he checked it at the sound of a voice—for it was the voice of Boolba.
"I cannot stay very long, comrade," he was saying as he entered the room, "but...."
The rest was a mumble.
"I will see that she is kept by herself," said a strange voice, evidently of someone in authority at the prison.
Malcolm bit his lips to check the cry that rose.
"Irene!"
"…" Boolba's deep voice was again a rumble.
"Yes, comrade, I will bring her in … let me lead you to a chair."
He evidently went to the door and called, and immediately there was a tramp of feet.
"What does this mean, Boolba?"
Malcolm knew the voice—he had heard it before—and his relief was such that all sense of his own danger passed.
"Sophia Kensky," Boolba was speaking now, "you are under arrest by order of the Soviet."
"Arrest!" the word was screamed, "me–?"
"You are plotting against the Revolution, and your wickedness has been discovered," said Boolba. "Matinshka! Little mama, it is ordered!"
"You lie! You lie!" she screeched. "You blind devil—I spit on you! You arrest me because you want the aristocrat Irene Yaroslav! Blind pig!"
"Prekanzeno, dushinka! It is ordered, dear little soul," murmured Boolba. "I go back alone—listen! My auto is turning. I go back alone, drushka, and who shall be my eyes now that my little mama is gone?"
They heard the chair pushed back as he rose and the scream and flurry as she leapt at him.
"Keep her away, little comrade," roared Boolba. "Keep her away—I am blind; her father blinded me; keep her away!"
It was Cherry Bim who slipped first from the cupboard.
Under the menace of his guns the soldiers fell back.
"Auto Russki—hold up the guard, Hay," he muttered, and Malinkoff jumped through the doorway to the step of the big car in one bound.
Cherry held the room. He spoke no Russian, but his guns were multi-lingual. There was a shot outside before he fired three times into the room. Then he fell back, slamming the door, and jumped into the car as it moved through the open gateway.
Malcolm was on one footboard, Malinkoff by the side of the chauffeur on the other.
So they rocked through the ill-paved streets of Moscow, and rushed the suburban barricade without mishap.
CHAPTER XIV
IN THE HOLY VILLAGE
"Preopojensky, but by a circuitous route," said Malinkoff, speaking across the chauffeur. "What about the wires?"
He looked up at the telegraph lines, looping from pole to pole, and Malcolm thrust his head into the window of the limousine to communicate this danger to the sybaritic Mr. Bim, who was spraying himself with perfume from a bottle he had found in the well-equipped interior of the car.
"Stop," said Cherry. "We're well away from Moscow."
At a word from Malinkoff the chauffeur brought the car to a standstill and Cherry slipped out, revolver in hand.
Then to the amazement of Malcolm and the unfeigned admiration of the general, Cherry Bim made good his boast. Four times his gun cracked and at each shot a line broke.
"To be repeated at intervals," said Cherry, climbing into the car. "Wake me in half an hour," and, curling himself up in the luxurious depths of swansdown cushions, he fell asleep.
Happily Malinkoff knew the country to an inch. They were not able to avoid the villages without avoiding the roads, but they circumnavigated the towns. At nightfall they were in the depths of a wood which ran down to the edge of the big lake on which the holy village of Preopojensky stands.
"The chauffeur is not the difficulty I thought he would be," reported Malinkoff; "he used to drive Korniloff in the days when he was a divisional general, and he is willing to throw in his lot with ours."
"Can you trust him!" asked Malcolm.
"I think so," said Malinkoff, "unless we shoot him we simply must trust him—what do you think, Mr. Bim?"
"You can call me Cherry," said that worthy. He was eating bread and sour cheese which had been bought at a fabulous price in one of the villages through which they had passed. Here again they might have been compelled to an act which would have called attention to their lawless character, for they had no money, had it not been for Cherry. He financed the party from the lining of his waistcoat (Malcolm remembered that the little man had never discarded this garment, sleeping or waking) and made a casual reference to the diamonds which had gone to his account via a soi-disant princess and the favourite of a Commissary.
"Anyway," he said, "we could have got it from the chauffeur—he's open to reason."
They did not ask him what argument he would have employed, but were glad subsequently that these arguments had not been used.
What was as necessary as food was petrol. Peter the chauffeur said that there were big army supplies in Preopojensky itself, and undertook to steal sufficient to keep the car running for a week.
They waited until it was dark before they left the cover of the wood, and walked in single file along a cart-track to the half a dozen blinking lights that stood for Preopojensky.
The car they had pulled into deeper cover, marking the place with a splinter of mirror broken from its silver frame.
"Nothing like a mirror," explained Cherry Bim. "You've only to strike a match, and it shows a light for you."
The way was a long one, but presently they came to a good road which crossed the track at right angles, but which curved round until it ran parallel with the path they had followed.
"There is the military store," whispered the chauffeur. "I will go now, my little general."
"I trust you, drushka," said Malinkoff.
"By the head of my mother I will not betray you," said the man, and disappeared in the darkness.
After this they held a council of war.
"So far as I can remember, Petroff is the silk merchant," said Malinkoff, "and his house is the first big residence we reach coming from this direction. I remember it because I was on duty at the Coronation of the Emperor, and his Imperial Majesty came to Preopojensky, which is a sacred place for the Royal House. Peter the Great lived here."
Luck was with them, for they had not gone far before they heard a voice bellowing a mournful song, and came up with its owner, a worker in the silk mills (they had long since ceased to work) who was under the influence of methylated spirit—a favourite tipple since vodka had been ukased out of existence.
"Ivan Petroff, son of Ivan?" he hiccoughed.
"Yes, my little dove, it is there. He is a boorjoo and an aristocrat, and there is no Czar and no God!—prikanzerio—it is ordered by the Soviet!…"
And he began to weep
"No Czar and no God! Long live the Revolution! Evivo! No blessed saints and no Czar! And I was of the Rasholnik!…"
They left him weeping by the roadside.
"The Rasholniks are the dissenters of Russia—this village was a hotbed of them, but they've gone the way of the rest," said Malinkoff sadly.
The house they approached was a big wooden structure ornamented with perfectly useless cupolas and domes, so that Malcolm thought at first that this was one of the innumerable churches in which the village abounded.
There was a broad flight of wooden stairs leading to the door, but this they avoided. A handful of gravel at a likely-looking upper window seemed a solution. The response was immediate. Though no light appeared, the window swung open and a voice asked softly:
"Who is that?"
"We are from Irene," answered Malcolm in the same tone.
The window closed, and presently they heard a door unfastened and followed the sound along the path which ran close to the house. It was a small side door that was opened, and Malcolm led the way through.
Their invisible host closed the door behind them, and they heard the clink of a chain.
"If you have not been here before, keep straight on, touching the wall with your right hand. Where it stops turn sharply to the right," said the unknown rapidly.
They followed his directions, and found the branch passage.
"Wait," said the voice.
The man passed them. They heard him turn a handle.
"Straight ahead you will find the door."
They obeyed, and their conductor struck a match and lit an oil lamp. They were in the long room—they guessed that by the glow of the closed stove they had seen as they entered.
The windows were heavily shuttered and curtained, and even the door was hidden under a thick portière. The man who had brought them in was middle-aged and poorly dressed, but then this was a time when everybody in Russia was poorly dressed, and his shabbiness did not preclude the possibility of his being the proprietor of the house, as indeed he was.
He was eyeing them with suspicion, not wholly unjustified, for the patent respectability of Cherry's Derby hat was no compensation for the armoury belted about his rotund middle.
But when the man's eyes fell upon Malinkoff, his whole demeanour changed, and he advanced with outstretched hand.
"General Malinkoff," he said, "you remember me; I entertained you at–"
"At Kieff! Of course!" smiled Malinkoff. "I did not know the Ivan Petroff of Moscow was the Ivan of the Ukraine."
"Now, gentlemen, what is your wish?" asked the man, and Malinkoff explained the object of the visit.
Petroff looked serious.
"Of course, I will do anything her Highness wishes," he said. "I saw her yesterday, and she told me that she had a dear friend in St. Basil." Malcolm tried to look unconcerned under Malinkoff's swift scrutiny and failed. "But I think she wished you to meet another—guest."
He paused.
"He has gone into Moscow to-night against my wishes," he said with trouble in his face; "such an old man–"
"Kensky?" said Malcolm quickly.
"Kensky." The tone was short. "I told him that no good would come of it—her Highness was married to-night."
Malcolm took a step forward, but it was an unsteady step.
"Married?" he repeated. "To whom was she married?"
Petroff looked down at the floor as though he dare not meet the eye of any man and say so monstrous a thing.
"To the servant Boolba," he said.
