Yakoff earnestly implored him to come and give the benefit of his experience to the assembly, and had promised him substantial payment. This latter argument was one which Cherry Bim could understand and appreciate. He accepted on the spot, and came down to the stuffy little underground room, expecting no more than to be asked to deliver a lecture on the gentle art of assassination. Not that he knew very much about it, because Cherry, with three or four men to his credit, had shot them in fair fight; but a hundred pounds was a lot of money, and he badly needed just enough to shake the mud of England from his shoes and seek a land more prolific in possibilities.

The first thing he noticed on arrival was that Boolba, the man who had interrogated him before, was not present. In his place sat a smaller man, with a straggly black beard and a white face, who was addressed as "Nicholas."

The second curious circumstance which struck him was that he was received also in an ominous silence.

The black-bearded man, who spoke in perfect English, indicated a chair to the left of him.

"Sit down, comrade," he said. "We have asked you to come because we have another proposition to make to you."

"If it's a croaking proposition, you needn't go any farther," said Cherry, "and I won't trouble you with my presence, gents, and——" he looked in vain for the woman he had seen before, and added, that he might round off his sentence gracefully—"fellow murderers."

"Mr. Bim," said Nicholas in his curious singsong tone, "does it not make your blood boil to see tyranny in high places——"

"Now, can that stuff!" said Cherry Bim. "Nothing makes my blood boil, or would make my blood boil, except sitting on a stove, I guess. Tyranny don't mean any more in my young life than Hennessy, and tyrants more than hydrants. I guess I was brought up in a land of freedom and glory, where the only tyrant you ever meet is a traffic cop. If this is another croaking job, why, gents, I won't trouble you any longer."

He half-rose, but Nicholas pushed him down.

"Not even if it was the Czar?" he said calmly.

Cherry Bim gaped at him.

"The Czar?" he said, with a queer little grimace to emphasize his disbelief in the evidence of his hearing. "What are you getting at?"

"Would you shoot the Czar for two thousand pounds?" asked Nicholas.

Cherry Bim pushed his hat to the back of his head and got up, shaking off the protesting arm.

"I'm through," he said, "and that's all there is to it."

It was at that moment that Serganoff came through the door and Cherry Bim remained where he stood, surprised to silence, for the face of the newcomer was covered from chin to forehead by a black silk mask.

The door was shut behind him; he walked slowly to the table and dropped into a broken chair, Cherry's eyes never leaving his face.

"For fifteen years," said the gun-man, speaking slowly, "I've been a crook, but never once have I seen a guy got up like that villain in a movie picture. Say, mister, let's have a look at your face."

Cherry Bim was not the only person perturbed by the arrival of a masked stranger. Only three men in the room were in the secret of the newcomer's identity, and suspicious and scowling faces were turned upon him.

"You will excuse me," said the mask, "but there are many reasons why you should not see me or know me again."

"And there's a mighty lot of reasons why you shouldn't know me again," said Cherry, "yet I've obliged you with a close-up of my distinguished features."

"You have heard the proposition," said the man. "What do you think of it?"

"I think it's a fool proposition," replied Cherry contemptuously. "I've told these lads before that I am not falling for the Lucretia Borgia stuff, and I'm telling you the same."

The masked man chuckled.

"Well, don't let us quarrel," he said. "Nicholas, give him the money we promised."

Nicholas put his hand in his pocket and brought out a roll of notes, which he tossed to the man on his left, and Cherry Bim, to whom tainted money was as acceptable as tainted pheasant to the epicure, pocketed it with a smack of his lips.

"Now, if there's anything I can do for you boys," he said, "here's your chance to make use of me. Though I say it myself, there ain't a man in New York with my experience, tact and finesse. Show me a job that can be done single-handed, with a dividend at the end of it, and I'll show you a man who can take it on. In the meantime," said he affably, "the drinks are on me. Call the waiter, and order the best in the house."

Serganoff held up his hand.

"Wait," he said; "was that the door?"

Nicholas nodded, and the whole room stood in silence and watched the door slowly open. There was a gasp of astonishment, of genuine surprise, for Irene Yaroslav was well known to them, and it was Irene Yaroslav who stood with her back to the door. She wore a long black cloak of sable and by her coiffure it was evident that she was wearing an evening toilette beneath the cloak.

"Where is Israel Kensky?" she asked.

She did not immediately see the man in the masked face, for he sat under a light and his broad-brimmed hat threw his face into shadow.

Nobody answered her, and she asked again:

"Where is Israel Kensky?"

"He is not here," said Serganoff coolly, as she took two paces and stopped dead, clasping her hands before her.

"What does this mean?" she asked. "What are you doing here, Ser——"

"Stop!" His voice was almost a shout, and yet there was a shake in it.

Serganoff realized the danger of his own position, if amongst these men were some who had cause to hate him.

"Do not mention my name, Irene."

"What are you doing here?" she asked. "And where is Israel Kensky?"

"He has not come," Serganoff's voice was uneven and his hands shook.

She turned to go, but he was before her and stood with his back to the entrance.

"You will wait," he said.

"What insolence is this?" she demanded haughtily. "I had a letter from Israel Kensky telling me to come here under his protection and I should learn the truth of the plot against my father."

Serganoff had recovered something of his self-possession and laughed softly.

"It was I who sent you that letter, Irene. I sent it because I particularly desired you here at this moment."

"You shall pay for this," she said, and tried to force her way past him, but his strong hands gripped her and pushed her back.

She turned with a flaming face upon the men.

"Are you men," she asked, "that you allow this villain, who betrayed my father and will betray you, to treat a woman so."

She spoke in Russian, and nobody moved. Then a voice said:

"Speak English, miss."

She turned and glanced gratefully at the stout little man with his grotesque Derby hat and his good-humoured smile.

"I have been brought here by a trick," she said breathlessly, "by this man"—she pointed to Serganoff. "Will you help me leave? You're English, aren't you?"

"American, miss," said Cherry Bim. "And as for helping you, why, bless you, you can class me as your own little bodyguard."

"Stop!" cried Serganoff hoarsely, and instinctively, at the sight of the levelled revolver. Cherry's hands went up. "You'll keep out of this and do not interfere," said Serganoff. "You'll have all the trouble you want before this evening is through. Irene, come here."

At one side of the room was a narrow doorway, which most of the members believed led to a cupboard, but which a few knew was a safety bolt in case of trouble. The Prince had recognized the door by its description, and had edged his way towards it, taking the key from his pocket.

He gripped the girl by the waist, inserted the key and flung open the door. She struggled to escape, but the hand that held the key also held the revolver, and never once did it point anywhere but at Cherry Bim's anatomy.

"Help!" cried the girl. "This man is Serganoff, the Chief of Police at Petrograd——"

There was a crash, and the sound of hurrying footsteps. A voice from the outer hall screamed, "The police!"

At that moment Serganoff dragged the girl through the doorway and slammed it behind him. They were in a small cellar, almost entirely filled with barrels, with only a narrow alley-way left to reach a farther door. He dragged her through this apartment, up a short flight of stairs. They were on the level of the restaurant, and the girl could hear the clatter of plates as he pushed her up another stairway and into a room. By its furniture she guessed it was a private dining-room. The blinds were drawn and she had no means of knowing whether the apartment overlooked the front or the back of the premises.

He stopped long enough to lock the door and then he turned to her, slipping off his mask.

"I thought you would recognize me," he said coolly.

"What does this outrage mean?" asked the girl with heaving bosom. "You shall pay for this, colonel."

"There will be a lot of payment to be made before this matter is through," he said calmly. "Calm yourself, Irene. I have saved you from a great disgrace. Are you aware that, at the moment I brought you from that room, the English police were raiding it?"

"I should not have been in the room but for you," she said, "my father——"

"It is about your father I want to speak," he said. "Irene, I am the sole heir to your father's estate. Beyond the property which is settled on you, you have nothing. My affection for you is known and approved at Court."

"Your affection!" she laughed bitterly. "I'd as soon have the affection of a wolf!"

"You could not have a more complete wolf than I," he said meaningly. "Do you know what has happened to-night? An anarchist club in London has been raided, and the Grand Duchess Irene Yaroslav has been found in the company of men whose object is to destroy the monarchy."

She realized with a sickening sense of disaster all that it meant. She knew as well as he in what bad odour her father stood at Court, and guessed the steps which would be taken if this matter became public.

"I was brought here by a trick," she said steadily. "A letter came to me, as I thought, from Israel Kensky——"

"It was from me," he interrupted.

"And you planned the raid, of course?"

He nodded.

"I planned the raid in the most promising circumstances," he said. "The gentleman who offered to be your good knight is a well-known New York gun-man. He is wanted by the police, who probably have him in their custody at this moment. He was brought here to-night, and an offer was made to him, an offer of a large sum of money, on condition that he would destroy the Czar."

She gasped.

"You see, my little Irene, that when this gun-man's evidence is taken in court, matters will look very bad for the Yaroslav family."

"What do you propose?" she asked.

"There are two alternatives," he said. "The first is that I should arrest you and hand you over to the police. The second is that you should undertake most solemnly to marry me, in which case I will take you away from here."

She was silent.

"Is there a third possibility?" she asked, and he shook his head.

"My dear," he said familiarly as he flicked a speck of dust from his sleeve. "I think you will take the easier way. None of these scum will betray you, thinking that you are one of themselves—as I happen to know, some of the best families in Russia are associated with plotters of this type. As for the American, who might be inclined to talk, in a few weeks he will be on his way to New York to serve a life sentence. I have been looking up his record, and particularly drew the attention of the English police to the fact that he would be here to-night."

Cherry Bim, creeping up the stairs in his stockinged feet—he had marked and shot the fuse-box to pieces before the police came in, and had burst his way through the door in the wall—heard the sound of voices in the little room and stopped to listen. It was not a thick door, and he could hear Serganoff's voice very clearly. He stooped down to the key-hole. Serganoff had not taken the key out, and it was an old-fashioned key, the end of which projected an eighth of an inch on the other side of the door. Cherry Bim felt in his pocket and produced a pair of peculiarly shaped nippers, and gripped the end of the key, turning it gently. Then he slipped his handy gun from his pocket and waited.

"Now, Irene," said Serganoff's voice. "You must decide. In a few minutes the police will be up here, for they are instructed to make a complete search of the house. I can either explain that you are here to witness the raid, or that I have followed you up and arrested you. Which is it to be?"

Still she did not answer. Serganoff had laid his revolver on the table and this she was manoeuvring to reach. He divined her intention before she sprang forward, and, gripping her by the waist, threw her back.

"That will be more useful to me than to you," he said.

"Sure thing it will!" said a voice behind him.

He turned as swift as a cat and fired. The horrified girl heard only one shot, so quickly did one report follow another. She saw Cherry Bim raise his hand and wipe the blood from his cheek, saw the splinter of wood where the bullet had struck behind him; then Serganoff groaned and sprawled forward over the table. She dared not look at him, but followed Bim's beckoning finger.

"Down the stairs and out of that door, miss," he said, "or the bulls will have you."

She did not ask him who the "bulls" were; she could guess. She flew down the stairs, with trembling hands unfastened the lock and stepped into the street. It was empty, save for two men, and one of these came forward to meet her with outstretched hands.

"Thank God you're safe!" he said. "You weren't there, were you?"

Malcolm Hay was incoherent. The detective who was with him could but smile a little, for the girl had come out of the door which, according to his instructions, led only to the private dining-room.

"Take me away," she whispered.

He put his arm about her trembling figure, and led her along the street. All the time he was in terror lest the police should call her back, and desire him to identify her; but nothing happened and they gained Shaftesbury Avenue and a blessed taxicab.

"To Israel Kensky," she said. "I can't go home like this."

He stretched out of the window and gave fresh instructions.

"I am greatly obliged to you, Mr. Hay," she faltered and then covered her face with her hands. "Oh, it was dreadful, dreadful!"

"What happened?" he asked.

She shook her head. Then suddenly:

"No, no, I must go home. Will you tell the cabman? There is a chance that I may get into my suite without Boolba seeing. Will you go on to Israel Kensky after you have left me, and tell him what has happened?"

He nodded, and again gave the change of instructions.

They reached the hotel at a period when most of the guests were either lingering over their dinner or had gone to the theatre.

"I hate leaving you like this," he said; "how do I know that you will get in without detection?"

She smiled in spite of her distress.

"You're an inventor, aren't you, Mr. Hay?" she laughed. "But I am afraid even you could not invent a story which would convince my father if he knew I had been to that horrible place." Presently she said: "My room overlooks the street. If I get in without detection I will come to the window and wave a handkerchief."

He waited in a fit of apprehension, until presently he saw a light leap up to three windows, and her figure appeared. There was a flutter of a white handkerchief, and the blinds were drawn. Malcolm Hay drove to Maida Vale, feeling that the age of romance was not wholly dead.

To his surprise Kensky had had the news before he reached there.

"Is she safe? Is she safe?" asked the old man tremulously. "Now, thank Jehovah for his manifold blessings and mercies! I feared something was wrong. Her Highness wrote to me this afternoon, and I did not get the letter," said Israel. "They waylaid the messenger, and wrote and told her to go to the Silver Lion—the devils!"

His hand was shaking as he took up the poker to stir the fire.

"He, at any rate, will trouble none of us again," he said with malignant satisfaction.

"He? Who?"

"Serganoff," said the old man. "He was dead when the police found him!"

"And the American?" asked Hay.

"Only Russians were arrested," said Israel Kensky. "I do not think I shall see him again."

In this he was wrong, though six years were to pass before they met: the mystic, Israel Kensky, Cherry Bim the modern knight-errant, and Malcolm Hay.



CHAPTER VII

KENSKY OF KIEFF

Malcolm Hay drew rein half a verst from the Church of St. Andrea. Though his shaggy little horse showed no signs of distress, Malcolm kicked his feet free from the stirrups and descended, for his journey had been a long one, the day was poisonously hot and the steppe across which he had ridden, for all its golden beauty, its wealth of blue cornflour and yellow genista, had been wearisome. Overhead the sky was an unbroken bowl of blue and at its zenith rode a brazen merciless sun.

He took a leather cigar-case from his pocket, extracted a long black cheroot and lit it; then, leaving his horse to its own devices, he mounted the bank by the side of the road, from whence he could look across the valley of the Dneiper. That majestic river lay beneath him and to the right.

Before him, at the foot of the long, steep and winding road, lay the quarter which is called Podol.

For the rest his horizon was filled with a jumble of buildings, magnificent or squalid; the half-revealed roofs on the wooded slopes of the four hills, and the ragged fringe of belfry and glittering cupola which made up the picture of Kieff.

The month was June and the year of grace 1914, and Malcolm Hay, chief engineer of the Ukraine-American Oil Corporation, had no other thought in his mind, as he looked upon the undoubted beauty of Kieff, than that it would be a very pleasant place to leave. He climbed the broken stone wall and stood, his hands thrust deeply into his breeches pockets, watching the scene. It was one of those innumerable holy days which the Russian peasant celebrated with such zest. Rather it was the second of three consecutive feast days and, as Malcolm knew, there was small chance of any work being done on the field until his labourers had taken their fill of holiness, and had slept off the colossal drunk which inevitably followed this pious exercise.

A young peasant, wearing a sheepskin coat despite the stifling heat of the day, walked quickly up the hill leading a laden donkey. The man stopped when he was abreast of Malcolm, took a cigarette from the inside of his coat and lit it.

"God save you, dudushka," he said cheerfully.

Malcolm was so used to being addressed as "little grandfather," and that for all his obvious youth, that he saw nothing funny in the address.

"God save you, my little man," he replied.

The new-comer was a broad-faced, pleasant-looking fellow with a ready grin, and black eyebrows that met above his nose. Malcolm Hay knew the type, but to-day being for idleness, he did not dread the man's loquacity as he would had it been a working day.

"My name is Gleb," introduced the man: "I come from the village of Potchkoi where my father has seven cows and a bull."

"God give him prosperity and many calves," said Malcolm mechanically.

"Tell me, gospodar, do you ride into our holy city to-day?"

"Surely," said Malcolm.

"Then you will do well to avoid the Street of Black Mud," said Gleb.

Malcolm waited.

"I speak wisely because of my name," said the man with calm assurance; "possibly your excellence has wondered why I should bear the same name as the great saint who lies yonder," he pointed to one of the towering belfries shimmering with gold that rose above the shoulder of a distant hill. "I am Gleb, the son of Gleb, and it is said that we go back a thousand years to the Holy Ones. Also, it was prophesied by a wise woman," said the peasant, puffing out a cloud of smoke and crossing himself at the same time, "that I should go the way of holiness and that after my death my body should be incorruptible."

"All this is very interesting, little brother," said Malcolm with a smile, "but first you must tell me why I should not go into the Street of Black Mud."

The man laughed softly.

"Because of Israel Kensky," he said significantly.

You could not live within a hundred miles of Kieff and not know of Israel Kensky. Malcolm realized with a start that he had not met the old man since he left him in London.

"In what way has Israel Kensky offended?" asked Malcolm, understanding the menace in the man's tone.

Gleb, squatting in the dust, brushed his sheepskin delicately with the tips of his fingers.

"Little father," he said, "all men know Israel Kensky is a Jew and that he practises secret devil-rites, using the blood of Christian children. This is the way of Jews, as your lordship knows. Also he was seen on the plains to shoot pigeons, which is a terrible offence, for to shoot a pigeon is to kill the Holy Ghost."

Malcolm knew that the greater offence had not yet been stated and waited.

"To-day I think they will kill him if the Grand Duke does not send his soldiers to hold the people in check—or the Grand Duchess, his lovely daughter who has spoken for him before, does not speak again."

"But why should they kill Kensky?" asked Malcolm.

It was not the first time that Israel Kensky had been the subject of hostile demonstrations. The young engineer had heard these stories of horrible rites practised at the expense of Christian children, and had heard them so often that he was hardened to the repetition.

The grin had left the man's face and there was a fanatical light in the solemn eyes when he replied:

"Gospodar, it is known that this man has a book which is called 'The Book of All-Power!'"

Malcolm nodded.

"So the foolish say," he said.

"It has been seen," said the other; "his own daughter, Sophia Kensky, who has been baptised in the faith of Our Blessed Lord, has told the Archbishop of this book. She, herself, has seen it."

"But why should you kill a man because he has a book?" demanded Malcolm, knowing well what the answer would be.

"Why should we kill him! A thousand reasons, gospodar," cried the man passionately; "he who has this book understands the black magic of Kensky and the Jews! By the mysteries in this book he is able to torment his enemies and bring sorrow to the Christians who oppose him. Did not the man Ivan Nickolovitch throw a stone at him, and did not Ivan drop dead the next day on his way to mass, aye and turn black before they carried him to the hospital? And did not Mishka Yakov, who spat at him, suffer almost immediately from a great swelling of the throat so that she is not able to speak or swallow to this very day without pain?"

Malcolm jumped down from the wall and laughed, and it was a helpless little laugh, the laugh of one who, for four long years, had fought against the superstitions of the Russian peasantry. He had seen the work of his hands brought to naught, and a boring abandoned just short of the oil because a cross-eyed man, attracted by curiosity, had come and looked at the work. He had seen his wells go up in smoke for some imaginary act of witchcraft on the part of his foreman, and, though he laughed, he was in no sense amused.

"Go with God, little brother," he said; "some day you will have more sense and know that men do not practise witchcraft."

"Perhaps I am wiser than you," said Gleb, getting up and whistling for his donkey, who had strayed up the side lane.

Before Malcolm could reply there was a clatter of hoofs and two riders came galloping round the bend of the road making for the town. The first of these was a girl, and the man who followed behind was evidently the servant of an exalted house, for he wore a livery of green and gold.

Gleb's ass had come cantering down at his master's whistle and now stood broadside-on in the middle of the road, blocking the way. The girl pulled up her horse with a jerk and, half-turning her head to her attendant, she called. The man rode forward.

"Get your donkey out of the way, fool," he boomed in a deep-chested roar.

He was a big man, broad-shouldered and stout. Like most Russian domestic servants, his face was clean-shaven, but Malcolm, watching the scene idly, observed only this about him—that he had a crooked nose and that his hair was a fiery red.

"Gently, gently." It was the girl who spoke and she addressed her restive horse in English.

As for Gleb, the peasant, he stood, his hands clasped before him, his head humbly hung, incapable of movement, and with a laugh Malcolm jumped down from the bank, seized the donkey by his bridle and drew him somewhat reluctantly to the side of the road. The girl's horse had been curveting and prancing nervously, so that it brought her to within a few paces of Malcolm, and he looked up, wondering what rich man's daughter was this who spoke in English to her horse ... only once before had he seen her in the light of day.

The face was not pale, yet the colour that was in her cheeks so delicately toned with the ivory-white of forehead and neck that she looked pale. The eyes, set wide apart, were so deep a grey that in contrast with the creamy pallor of brow they appeared black.

A firm, red mouth he noticed; thin pencilling of eyebrows, a tangle of dark brown hair; but neither sight of her nor sound of her tired drawling voice, gave her such permanence in his mind as the indefinite sense of womanliness that clothed her like an aurora.

He responded wonderfully to some mysterious call she made upon the man in him. He felt that his senses played no part in shaping his view. If he had met her in the dark, and had neither seen nor heard; if she had been a bare-legged peasant girl on her way to the fields; if he had met her anywhere, anyhow—she would have been divine.

She, for her part, saw a tall young man, mahogany faced, leanly made, in old shooting-jacket and battered Stetson hat. She saw a good forehead and an unruly mop of hair, and beneath two eyes, now awe-stricken by her femininity (this she might have guessed) rather than by her exalted rank. They were eyes with a capacity for much laughter, she thought, and wished Russian men had eyes like those.

"My horse is afraid of your donkey, I think," she smiled.

"It isn't my donkey," he stammered, and she laughed again frankly at his embarrassment.

And then the unexpected happened. With a frightened neigh her horse leapt sideways toward him. He sprang back to avoid the horse's hoofs and heard her little exclamation of dismay. In the fraction of a second he realized she was falling and held out his arms to catch her. For a moment she lay on his breast, her soft cheek against his, the overpowering fragrance of her presence taking his breath away. Then she gently disengaged herself and stepped back. There was colour in her face now and something which might have been mischief, or annoyance, or sheer amusement, in her eyes.

"Thank you," she said.

Her tone was even and did not encourage further advances on his part.

"I lost my balance. Will you hold my horse's head?"

She was back in the saddle and turning, with a proud little inclination of her head, was picking a way down the steep hill before he realized what had happened. He gazed after her, hoping at least that feminine curiosity would induce her to turn and look back, but in this he was disappointed.

The peasant, Gleb, still stood by the side of the road, his hands clasped, his head bent as though in a trance.

"Wake up, little monkey," said Malcolm testily. "Why did you not hold the horse for the lady whilst I helped her to mount?"

"Dudushka, it is forbidden, Zaprestcheno," said the man huskily. "She is Kaziomne! The property of the Czar!"

"The Czar!" gasped Malcolm.

He had lived long enough in Russia to have imbibed some of the awe and reverence for that personage.

"Little master," said the man, "it was her Magnificence, the Grand Duchess Irene Yaroslav."

"The Grand——!" Malcolm gasped. The reality of his dreams and he had not recognized her!

Long after the peasant had departed he stood on the spot where he had held her, like a man in a trance, and he was very thoughtful when he picked up the reins of his horse and swung himself into the saddle.

Kieff is built upon many hills and it has the beauty and distinction of possessing steeper roads than any other city in Europe. He was on his way to the Grand Hotel, and this necessitated his passing through Podol, crossing the Hill of the Cliff, and descending into the valley beyond.

Considering it was a feast day the streets were strangely deserted. He met a few old men and women in festal garb and supposed that the majority of the people were at the shrines in which Kieff abounds. He passed through the poorer Jewish quarter, and did not remember the peasant's warning not to go into the Street of Black Mud until he had turned into that thoroughfare.

Long before he had reached the street he heard the roar of the crowd, and knew that some kind of trouble was brewing. The street was filled with knots of men and women, and their faces by common attraction, were turned in one direction. The focal point was a densely packed crowd which swayed toward the gateway of a tall, grim-looking house, which he recognized as the home of the millionaire, Kensky.

The roar intensified to a continuous shriek of malignant hate. He saw sticks and fists brandished and heard above the scream of frenzied women the deep-throated "Kill! Death to the Jew!" which was not unfamiliar to one who knew Kieff in moments of religious excitement. It was no business of his, and he drew his horse to the side of the street and watched, wondering what part the black-bearded Russian priests, who were in force and who seemed to form the centre of each knot of idlers, were playing in this act of persecution.

On the outskirts of the crowd he observed a green and gold coat, and, its wearer turning his head, he recognized him as the swarthy menial who had ridden behind the Grand Duchess. He was as violent and as energetic as the most lawless, and seemed engaged in pushing men into the crowd and dragging forward hesitant bystanders to swell the throng which was pressing about the iron gates of the building.

And then Malcolm saw something which brought his heart to his mouth, a white hand raised from above the bobbing black heads, a hand raised in appeal or command. Instinctively he knew its owner and spurred his horse into the throng, sending the people flying in all directions. There was a small clear space immediately before the door which enabled him to see the two chief actors in the drama long before he was within hailing distance.

The space was caused by a dead horse, as he afterwards discovered, but, for the moment, his eyes were fixed on the girl who stood with her back to the grille, shielding with her frail body a little old man, white-bearded and bent, who crouched behind her outstretched arms, his pale face streaming with blood. A broken key in the grille told the story of his foiled attempt to escape. Grimy hands clutched at Malcolm's knees as he drove through the press, a stone whistled past his ear and shrill voices uttered imprecations at the daring foreigner, but he swerved to left and right and made a way until the sight of the dead horse brought his frightened mount to a quivering standstill.

He leapt from the saddle and sprang to the girl's side, and to his amazement his appearance seemed to strike consternation into her heart.

"Why did you come? Get away as quickly as you can," she breathed. "Oh, you were mad to come here!"

"But—but you?" he said.

"They will not hurt me," she said rapidly. "It is the old man they want. Can you smash the lock and get him inside?"

"Give us the book, Jew," yelled a deep voice above the babel of sound. "Give us the book and you shall live! Lady! Magnificence! Make the old man give us the book!"

Malcolm took a flying kick at the gate and the lock yielded. He half lifted, half carried the old man and pushed inside, where another locked door confronted them.

"Have you a key?" demanded Malcolm hurriedly. "Quick!"

The old man felt in his pocket with trembling fingers and in doing so he crept behind his guardian. Malcolm now turned and faced the crowd.

"Come in, for God's sake," he called to the girl, but she shook her head.

"They will not hurt me," she said over her shoulder; "it is you!"

At that moment Malcolm felt something heavy slipped into the loose pocket of his jacket and a quivering voice, harsh with fear, whispered in his ear:

"Keep it, gospodar. To-morrow I will come for it at the Grand Hotel at the middle hour!"

The crowd was now surging forward and the girl was being pressed back into the little lobby by their weight. Suddenly the door opened with a crack and the old man slipped through.

"Come, come," he cried.

Malcolm leapt forward, clasped the girl about the waist and swung her behind him.

The shrieks of the crowd broke and a new note crept into the pandemonium of sound, a note of fear. From outside came a clatter of hoofs on the cobbled roadway. There was a flash of red and white pennons, the glitter of steel lances and a glimpse of bottle-green coats as half a sotnia of Cossacks swept the street clear.

They looked at one another, the girl and the man, oblivious to the appeal of hand and voice which the old man in the doorway was offering.

"I think you are very brave," said the girl, "or else very foolish. You do not know our Kieff people."

"I know them very well," he said grimly.

"It was equally foolish of me to interfere," she said quickly, "and I ought not to blame you. They killed my horse."

She pointed to the dead horse lying before the doorway.

"Where was your servant?" he asked, but she made no reply. He repeated the question, thinking she had not heard and being at some loss for any other topic of conversation.

"Let us go out," she said, ignoring the query, "we are safe now."

He was following her when he remembered the packet in his pocket and turned to the old man.

"Here is your——"

"No, no, no, keep it," whispered Israel Kensky. "They may come again to-night! My daughter told them that I was carrying it. May she roast!"

"What is it?" asked Malcolm curiously.

The old man's lips parted in a toothless smile.

"It is the 'Book of All-Power!'"

He blinked up at Malcolm, peering into his face expectantly. "They all desire it, gospodar, from the Grand Duke in his beautiful palace to the moujik in his cellar—they all desire my lovely book! I trust you with it for one night, gospodar, because you are English. Ah, well, you are not Russian. Guard it closely, for it holds the secret of tears and of happiness. You shall learn how to make men and women your slaves and how to turn people into Jews, and how to make men and women adore you, ai, ai! There are recipes for beauty in my book which make plain women lovely and old men young!"

Malcolm could only stare.



CHAPTER VIII

THE GRAND DUKE IS AFFABLE

The girl's voice called, and Malcolm left old Kensky without a word and went to her side. "Will you walk with me to my father's palace?" she said. "I do not think it is safe for you to be alone."

A semi-circle of mounted Cossacks surrounded them now, and the unfaithful Boolba (such was the servant's name, he learnt) was standing with an impassive face holding his horse's head.

"One of the soldiers will take your horse," she said. "Boolba, you will follow us."

Her voice was stern and she looked the man straight in the eyes, but he did not flinch.

"Prikazeno, Highness, it is ordered," he said simply.

She turned and walked the way she had come, turning into the big square followed by a small escort of Cossacks.

They walked in silence for some time, and it was the girl who first spoke.

"What do you think of Russia, Mr. Hay?" she asked.

He jerked his head round at her in surprise.

"You didn't know me on the hill," she laughed, "but I knew you! And there are not so many foreigners in the Kieff region that you should be unknown to the Grand Duke," she said, "and besides, you were at the reception which my father gave a year ago."

"I did not see your Highness there," said Malcolm. "I came especially——" he stopped short in confusion.

"That was probably because I was not visible," she replied dryly. "I have been to Cambridge for a year to finish my education."

"That is why your English is so good," he smiled.

"It's much better than your Russian," she said calmly. "You ought not to have said 'ukhoditzay' to people—you only say that to beggars, and I think they were rather annoyed with you."

"I should imagine they were," he laughed; "but won't you tell me what happened to your servant? I thought I saw him on the outskirts of the crowd and the impression I formed was——" he hesitated.

"I shouldn't form impressions if I were you," she said hurriedly. "Here in Russia one ought not to puzzle one's head over such things. When you meet the inexplicable, accept it as such and inquire no further."

She was silent again, and when she spoke she was more serious.

"The Russian people always impress me as a great sea of lava, boiling and spluttering and rolling slowly between frail banks which we have built for them," said the girl.

"I often wonder whether those banks will ever break," said Malcolm quietly; "if they do——"

"Yes?"

"They will burn up Russia," said Malcolm.

"So I think," said the girl. "Father believes that the war——" she stopped short.

"The war?"

Malcolm had heard rumours so often of the inevitable war which would be fought to establish the hegemony of the Slav over Eastern Europe that the scepticism in his tone was pardonable. She looked at him sharply.

"You do not think there will be war?"

"One has heard so often," he began.

"I know, I know," she said, a little impatiently, and changed the subject.

They talked about the people, the lovable character of the peasants, the extraordinary depth of their religious faiths, their amazing superstitions, and suddenly Malcolm remembered the book in his pocket, and was about to speak of it, but stopped himself, feeling that, by so speaking, he was betraying the confidence of the old man who had entrusted his treasure to a stranger's care.

"What is this story of the book of Kensky?"

"'The Book of All-Power'?"

She did not smile as he had expected her to.

"Old Israel Kensky is a curious man," she said guardedly. "The people credit him with all sorts of powers which of course he does not possess. They believe he is a wizard, that he can bend people to his will. They say the most terrible things about the religious ceremonies over which he presides."

They were mounting the hill behind which lay the fashionable quarter of Kieff with its great stone palaces, its wonderful cherry gardens and broad avenues.

"I like old Kensky," she went on; "he sometimes comes to the palace to bring new silks—he is the greatest merchant in Little Russia. He even tells me his troubles—he has a terrible daughter: you have heard about her?"

"I thought she was rather good," said Malcolm humorously. "Isn't she a Christian?"

The girl shrugged her shoulders. Evidently her Grand Ducal Highness had no great opinion of Sophia Kensky's conversion.

The Grand Ducal palace was built in the Byzantine style and presented, from the broad carriage drive that led from the road, a confusion of roofs, windows and bastions, as though the designer had left the working out of his plan to fifty different architects, and each architect had interpreted the scheme of construction in his own way.

The Grand Duke was standing in the portico as they went through the gate, and came down the steps to meet them. He was a mild-looking man of medium height and wore pince-nez. Malcolm remembered that on the one occasion he had met his Highness he had been disappointed in his lack of personal grandeur.

"My child, my child!" said the Duke, coming to the girl with outstretched arms. "What a terrible misfortune! How came you to be mixed up in this matter? The commandant has just telephoned to me. I have called for his resignation. By St. Inokeste, I will not have the rabble breathing upon you! And this is the good gentleman who came to your rescue?"

He surveyed Malcolm with his cold blue eyes, but both glance and intonation lacked the cordiality which his words implied.

"I thank you. I am indeed grateful to you. You understand they would not have harmed the Grand Duchess, but this you could not know. As for the Jew——"

He became suddenly thoughtful. He had the air of a man wholly preoccupied in his secret thoughts and who now emerged from his shell under the greatest protest. To Malcolm it seemed that he resented even the necessity for communicating his thoughts to his own daughter.

"I am happy to have been of service to your Grand Ducal Highness," said Malcolm correctly.

"Yes, yes, yes," interrupted the Grand Duke nervously, "but you will stay and breakfast with me? Come, I insist, Mr.—er—er——"

"Mr. Hay, father," said the girl.

The conversation throughout was carried on in English, which was not remarkable, remembering that that was the family language of the Court.

"Yes, yes, yes, Mr. Hay, you must stay to breakfast. You have been very good, very noble, I am sure. Irene, you must persuade this gentleman." He held out his hand jerkily and Malcolm took it with a bow.

Then without another word or even so much as a glance at his daughter, the Grand Duke turned and hurried back into the palace, leaving Malcolm very astonished and a little uncomfortable.

The girl saw his embarrassment.

"My father does not seem to be very hospitable," she smiled, and once more he saw that little gleam of mischief in her eyes, "but I will give you a warmer invitation."

He spread out his hands in mock dismay and looked down at his untidy clothes.

"Your Highness is very generous," he said, "but how can I come to the Grand Duke's table like this?"

"You will not see the Grand Duke," she laughed; "father gives these invitations but never accepts them himself! He breakfasts in his own room, so if you can endure me alone——" she challenged.

He said nothing but looked much, and her eyes fell before his. All the time he was conscious that red-haired Boolba stood stiffly behind him, a spectator, yet, as Malcolm felt, a participant in this small affair of the breakfast invitation. She followed Malcolm's look and beckoned the man forward. He had already surrendered the horses to an orderly.

"Take the lord to a guest-room," she said in Russian, "and send a valet to attend to him."

"It is ordered," said the man, and with a nod, the girl turned and walked into the house, followed at a more leisurely pace by Malcolm and the man with the crooked nose.

Boolba led the way up a broad flight of stairs, carpeted with thick red pile, along a corridor pierced at intervals with great windows, to another corridor leading off and through a door which, from its dimensions, suggested the entrance to a throne-room, into a suite gorgeously furnished and resplendent with silver electroliers. It consisted of a saloon leading into a bedroom, which was furnished in the same exquisite taste. A further door led to a marble-tiled bathroom.

"Such luxury!" murmured Malcolm.

"Has the gospodar any orders?"

It was the solemn Boolba who spoke. Malcolm looked at him.

"Tell me this, Boolba," he said, falling into the familiar style of address which experience had taught him was the correct line to follow when dealing with Russian servants, "how came it that your mistress was alone before the house of Israel Kensky, the Jew, and you were on the outskirts of the crowd urging them on?"

If the man felt any perturbation at the bluntness of the question he did not show it.

"Kensky is a Jew," he said coolly; "on the night of the Pentecost he takes the blood of new-born Christian babies and sprinkles his money so that it may be increased in the coming year. This Sophia Kensky, his own daughter, has told me."

Malcolm shrugged his shoulders.

"You are no ignorant moujik, Boolba," he said contemptuously, "you have travelled with his Highness all over the world." (This was a shot at a venture, but apparently was not without justification.) "How can you, an educated man of the people, believe such rubbish?"

"He has a book, gospodar," said Boolba, "and we people who desire power would have that book, for it teaches men how they may command the souls of others, so that when they lift their little fingers, those who hate them best shall obey them."

Malcolm looked at him in astonishment.

"Do you believe this?"

For the first time a smile crossed the face of the man with the crooked nose. It was not a pleasant smile to see, for there was cunning in it and a measureless capacity for cruelty.

"Who knows all the miracles and wonders of the world?" he said. "My lord knows there is a devil, and has he not his angels on earth? It is best to be sure of these things, and we cannot be certain—until we have seen the book which the Jew gave to your lordship."

He paused a little before uttering the last sentence which gave his assertion a special significance. Malcolm eyed him narrowly.

"The Jew did not give me any book, Boolba," he said.

"I thought your lordship——"

"You thought wrongly," said Malcolm shortly.

Boolba bowed and withdrew.

The situation was not a particularly pleasant one. Malcolm had in his possession a book which men were willing to commit murder to obtain, and he was not at all anxious that his name should be associated with the practice of witchcraft.

It was all ridiculous and absurd, of course, but then in Russia nothing was so absurd that it could be lightly dismissed from consideration. He walked to the door and turned the key, then took from his pocket the thing which Israel Kensky had slipped in. It was a thick, stoutly bound volume secured by two brass locks. The binding was of yellow calf, and it bore the following inscription in Russian stamped in gold lettering:

"THE BOOK OF ALL-POWER."

"Herein is the magic of power and the words and symbols which unlock the sealed hearts of men and turn their proud wills to water."

On the bottom left-hand corner of the cover was an inscription in Hebrew, which Malcolm could not read, but which he guessed stood for the birth-name of Israel Kensky. He turned the book over in his hand, and, curiosity overcoming him, he tried to force his thumb-nail into the marbled edge of the leaves that he might secure a glimpse of its contents. But the book was too tightly bound, and after another careful examination, he pulled off his coat and started to make himself presentable for breakfast.

The little meal was wholly delightful. Besides Malcolm and the girl there were present a faded Russian lady, whom he guessed was her official chaperon, and a sour-visaged Russian priest who ceremoniously blessed the food and was apparently the Grand Duke's household chaplain. He did not speak throughout the meal, and seemed to be in a condition of rapt contemplation.

But for all Malcolm knew there might have been a hundred people present—he had eyes and ears only for the girl. She had changed to a dark blue costume beneath which was a plain white silk blouse cut deeply at the neck.

He was struck by the fact that she wore no jewels, and he found himself rejoicing at the absence of rings in general and of one ring in particular.

Of course, it was all lunacy, sheer clotted madness, as he told himself, but this was a day to riot in illusions, for undreamt-of things had happened, and who could swear that the days of fairies had passed? To meet a dream-Irene on his way to Kieff was unlikely, to rescue her from an infuriated mob (for though they insisted that she was in no danger he was no less insistent that he rescued her, since this illusion was the keystone to all others), to be sitting at lunch with such a vision of youthful loveliness—all these things were sufficiently outside the range of probabilities to encourage the development of his dream in a comfortable direction.

"To-night," thought he, "I shall be eating a prosaic dinner at the Grand Hotel, and the Grand Duchess Irene Yaroslav will be a remote personage whom I shall only see in the picture papers, or possibly over the heads of a crowd on her way to the railway station."

And so he was outrageously familiar. He ceased to "Highness" her, laughed at her jokes and in turn provoked her to merriment. The meal came to an end too soon for him, but not too soon for the nodding dowager nor the silent, contemplating priest, who had worn through his period of saintly abstraction and had grown most humanly impatient.

The girl looked at her watch.

"Good gracious," she said, "it is four o'clock and I have promised to go to tennis." (Malcolm loathed tennis from that hour.)

He took his leave of her with a return to something of the old ceremonial.

"Your Grand Ducal Highness has been most gracious," he said, but she arrested his eloquence with a little grimace.

"Please, remember, Mr. Hay, that I shall be a Grand Ducal Highness for quite a long time, so do not spoil a very pleasant afternoon by being over-punctilious."

He laughed.

"Then I will call you——"

He came to a dead end, and the moment was embarrassing for both, though why a Grand Ducal Highness should be embarrassed by a young engineer she alone might explain.

Happily there arrived most unexpectedly the Grand Duke himself, and if his appearance was amazing, as it was to judge by the girl's face, his geniality was sensational.

He crossed the hall and gripped the young man's hand.

"You're not going, Mr. Hay?" he asked. "Come, come, I have been a very bad host, but I do not intend to let you go so soon! I have much that I want to talk to you about. You are the engineer in charge of the Ukraine Oil Field, is it not so? Excellent! Now, I have oil on my estate in the Urals but it has never been developed...."

He took the young man by the arm and led him through the big doors to the garden, giving him no chance to complete or decently postpone his farewell to the girl, who watched with undisguised amazement this staggering affability on the part of her parent.



CHAPTER IX

THE HAND AT THE WINDOW

An hour later she came from tennis, to find her father obviously bored almost to the point of tears, yet making an heroic attempt to appear interested in Malcolm's enthusiastic dissertation of the future of the oil industry. The Grand Duke rose gladly on her appearance, and handed him over.

"I have persuaded Mr. Hay to dine with us to-night, and I have sent to the hotel for his baggage. He is most entertaining, my little love, most entertaining. Persuade him to talk to you about—er—oil and things," and he hurriedly withdrew.

The girl sat down on the seat he had vacated.

"You're a most amazing person, Mr. Hay," she smiled.

"So I have been told," said Malcolm, as he filled a glass with tea from the samovar.

"You have also a good opinion of yourself, it seems," she said calmly.

"Why do you think I am amazing, anyway?" said he recklessly, returning to the relationships they had established at luncheon.

"Because you have enchanted my father," she said.

She was not smiling now, and a troubled little frown gathered on her brow.

"Please tell me your magic."

"Perhaps it is the book," he said jestingly.

"The book!" she looked up sharply. "What book?"

And then, as a light dawned on her, she rose to her feet.

"You have—you have Israel Kensky's book?" she whispered in horror.

He nodded.

"Here with you?"

"Yes, here," he slapped his pocket.

She sat down slowly and reached out her hand, and he thought it shook.

"I do not know who was the madder—Israel Kensky to give it to you or you to take it," she said. "This is the only house in Kieff where your life is safe, and even here——" She stopped and shook her head. "Of course, you're safe here," she smiled, "but I wish the book were somewhere else."

She made no further reference either to the amazing volume or to her father, and that night, when he came down to dinner, feeling more on level terms with royalty (though his dress-suit was four years old and his patent shoes, good enough for such mild society functions as came his way, looked horribly cracked and shabby), he dismissed the matter from his mind. The dinner party was a large one. There were two bishops, innumerable popes, several bejewelled women, an officer or two and the inevitable duenna. He was introduced to them all, but remembered only Colonel Malinkoff, a quiet man whom he was to meet again.

To his amazement he found that he had been seated in the place of honour, to the right of the Grand Duke, but he derived very little satisfaction from that distinction, since the girl was at the other end of the table.

She looked worried and her conversation, so far as he could hear, consisted of "yes" and "no" and conventional expressions of agreement with the views of her companions.

But the duke was loquacious, and at an early stage of the dinner the conversation turned on the riot of the morning. There was nothing remarkable in the conversation till suddenly the Grand Duke, without preliminary, remarked in a matter-of-fact tone:

"The danger is that Kensky may very well use his evil powers against the welfare of Holy Church."

There was a murmur of agreement from the black-bearded popes, and Malcolm opened his eyes in astonishment.

"But surely your Highness does not believe that this man has any supernatural gift."

The Grand Duke stared at him through his glasses.

"Of course," he said, "if there are miracles of the Church why should there not be performed miracles by the Powers of Darkness? Here in Kieff," he went on, "we have no reason to doubt that miracles are performed every day. Who doubts that worship at the shrine of St. Barbara in the Church of St. Michael of the Golden Head protects us against lightning?"

"That is undoubtedly the fact, your Imperial Highness," said a stout pope, speaking with his mouth full. "I have seen houses with lightning conductors struck repeatedly, and I have never known any place to be touched by lightning if the master of the house was under the protection of St. Barbara."

"And beneath the Church of Exaltation," the Grand Duke went on, "more miracles have been performed than elsewhere in the world."

He peered round the table for contradiction.

"It was here that the Two Brothers are buried and it was their prayer that they should sleep together in the same grave. One died before the other, and when the second had passed away and they carried his body to the tomb, did not the body of the first brother arise to make room? And is there not a column in the catacomb to which, if a madman is bound, he recovers his reason? And are there not skulls which exude wonderful oils which cure men of the most terrible diseases, even though they are on the point of death?"

Malcolm drew a long breath. He could understand the superstitious reverence of the peasant for these relics and miracles, but these were educated men. One of them stood near to the throne and was versed in the intricacies of European diplomacy. These were no peasants steeped in ignorance, but intellectuals. He pinched himself to make sure that he was awake as the discussion grew and men swopped miracles in much the same spirit of emulation as store-loafers swop lies. But the conversation came back to him, led thereto by the Grand Duke, and once more it centred on that infernal book. The volume in question was not six inches from the Grand Duke, for Malcolm had stuffed it into his tail pocket before he came down to dinner, and this fact added a certain piquancy to the conversation.

"I do not doubt, your Highness," said a stout bishop, who picked his teeth throughout the dinner, "that Kensky's book is identical with a certain volume on devil worship which the blessed Saint Basil publicly denounced and damned. It was a book especially inspired by Satan, and contained exact rules, whereby he who practised the magic could bind in earthly and immortal obedience the soul of anybody he chose, thus destroying in this life their chance of happiness and in the life to come their souls' salvation."

All within reach of the bishop's voice crossed themselves three times.

"It would have been well," mused the Grand Duke, "if the people had succeeded this morning."

He shot a glance at Malcolm, a glance full of suspicious inquiry, but the young man showed no sign either of resentment or agreement. But he was glad when the dinner ended and the chance came to snatch a few words with the girl. The guests were departing early, and kummel and coffee was already being served on a large silver salver by the buffetschek, whom Malcolm recognized as the ubiquitous Boolba.

"I shall not see you again," said the girl in a low voice. "I am going to my room. But I want you to promise me something, Mr. Hay."

"The promise is made before you ask," said he.

"I want you to leave as early as you possibly can to-morrow morning for your mine, and if I send you word I want you to leave Russia without delay."

"But this is very astonishing."

She faced him squarely, her hands behind her back.

"Mr. Hay," she said, and her low voice was vibrant with feeling, "you have entangled yourself in an adventure which cannot possibly end well for you. Whatever happens, you cannot come out with credit and safety, and I would rather you came out with credit."

"I don't understand you," he said.

"I will make it plainer," said she. "Unless something happens in the next month or two which will point the minds of the people to other directions, you will be suspect. The fact that you have the book is known."

"I know," he said.

"By whom?" she asked quickly.

"By Boolba, your servant."

She raised her hand to her lips, as if to suppress a cry. It was an odd little trick of hers which he had noticed before.

"Boolba," she repeated. "Of course! That explains!"

At that moment the Grand Duke called him. The guests had dwindled away to half a dozen.

"Your coffee, Mr. Hay, and some of our wonderful Russian kummel. You will not find its like in any other part of the world."

Malcolm drank the coffee, gulped down the fiery liqueur, and replaced the glass on the tray. He did not see the girl again, and half an hour later he went up to his room, locked the door and undressed himself slowly, declining the assistance which had been offered to him by the trained valet.

From the open window came the heavy perfume of heliotrope, but it was neither the garden scent nor the moderate quantity of wine he had taken, nor the languid beauty of the night, which produced this delicious sensation of weariness. He undressed and got into his pyjamas, then sat at the end of his bed, his head between his hands.

He had sat for a long time like this, before he realized the strangeness of his attitude and getting on to his feet, found himself swaying.

"Doped," he said, and sat down again.

There was little of his brain that was awake, but that little he worked hard. He had been drugged. It was either in the kummel or in the coffee. Nothing but dope would make him feel as he was feeling now. He fell into bed and pulled the clothes about him. He wanted to keep awake to fight off the effects of the stuff and, by an absurd perversion of reasoning, he argued that he was in a more favourable position to carry out his plan if he made himself comfortable in bed, than if he followed any other course.

The drug worked slowly and erratically. He had moments of complete unconsciousness with intervals which, if they were not free from the effect of the agent, were at least lucid. One such interval must have come after he had been in bed for about an hour, for he found himself wide awake and lay listening to the thumping of his heart, which seemed to shake the bed.

The room was bathed in a soft green light, for it was a night of full moon. He could see dimly the furniture and the subdued gleam of silver wall-sconce, that caught the ghostly light and gave it a more mysterious value. He tried to rise but could not. To roll his head from side to side seemed the limitation of conscious effort.

And whilst he looked, the door opened noiselessly and closed again. Somebody had come into the room, and that somebody passed softly across the foot of the bed, and stood revealed against the window. Had he been capable of speech he would have cried out.

It was the girl!

He saw her plainly in a moment. She wore a wrapper over her nightdress, and carried a small electric lamp in her hand. She went to the chair where he had thrown his clothes and made a search. He saw her take something out and put it under her wrap, then she went back the way she came, pausing for the space of a second at the foot of his bed.

She stood there undecidedly, and presently she came up to the side of the bed and bent down over him. His eyes were half closed; he had neither the power of opening or shutting them, but he could see clearly the white hand that rested on the bed and the book that it held, and the polished table by the bedside reflecting the moonlight back to her face so that she seemed something as intangible and as shadowy as the night itself.

A little smile played upon her pale face, and every whispered word she uttered was clear and distinct.

"Good-bye, poor Mr. Hay," she said softly.

She shook her head as though in pity; then, stopping swiftly, she kissed him on the cheek and passed quickly to the half-open door by which she had entered. She was nearing the door when she stopped dead and shrank back toward the bed. Another electric lamp gleamed unexpectedly. He saw the white of her nightdress show as a dazzling strip of light where the beam caught it. Then the unknown intruder touched on the light, and they stood revealed, the girl tall, imperious, a look of scorn on her beautiful face, and the stout menial with the crooked nose.

Boolba wore an old dressing-gown girdled about with a soiled rainbow sash. His feet were bare, and in his two hands laying from palm to palm was a long thin knife.

At the sight of the girl he fell back, a grotesque sprawling movement which was not without its comicality. A look of blank bewilderment creased his big face.

"You—you, Highness!" he croaked. "The Jew, where is he?"

She was silent. Malcolm saw the quick rise and fall of her bosom, saw the book clutched closer to her side beneath the filmy silken gown.

Boolba looked from the girl to Malcolm, from Malcolm to the heavy curtains at either side of the open window—curtains which the drugged man had not drawn.

"He has left his quarters, Highness," Boolba spoke eagerly; "he was seen to enter the grounds of the palace—where is he?"

He took a step toward her.

"Stand back—you slave!" she breathed, but with a bound he was upon her. There was a brief struggle, and the book was wrenched from her hand.

Malcolm saw all this, but lay as one dead. He was conscious but paralysed by the potion, and could only watch the girl in the grip of the obese monster and feel his heart going like a steam hammer.

Boolba stood gloating over his prize, fondling the book in his big, coarse hands. Malcolm wondered why the girl did not scream—yet how could she? She was in his room in the middle of the night, she, a daughter of emperors.

The man tried to wrench open the locks which held the covers, but failed. Suddenly he looked up, and glared across at the girl.

He said nothing, but the suspicion in that scowl was emphasized when he moved to the wall near the window and the light of a bracket lamp.

Again he examined the book and for the first time spoke:

"Oh, Highness, was it you who sent for Israel Kensky that the book should be restored——"

So far he got when an arm came from behind the curtain—a hand blue-veined, and it held a yellow handkerchief.

The girl saw it, and her hand went to her mouth.

Then the handkerchief struck full across Boolba's face, covering it from forehead to the mouth.

For a moment the man was paralysed, then he pulled the handkerchief away and clawed at the clay-like substance which adhered to his face.

"Mother of God!"

He screamed the words and, dropping the book, stumbled forward, rubbing at his face, shrieking with pain.

The girl ran swiftly through the open door, for feet were now pattering along the corridors and the flicker of lights showed through the doorway. Boolba was rolling on the ground in agony when the servants crowded in, followed by the Grand Duke—and he alone was fully dressed.

"Boolba—what is it?"

"The book—the book! It is mine! See ... floor!"

But the book had disappeared.

"Where, Boolba—where, my good Boolba?" The voice of Boolba's master was tremulous. "Show me—did he strike you—he shall suffer, by the saints! Look for it, Boolba!"

"Look! Look!" yelled the writhing man. "How shall I look? I who am blind—blind—blind!"



CHAPTER X

TERROR IN MAKING

In the spring of 1919 Malcolm Hay came out from the Kursky Voksal carrying his own well-worn valise. An indifferent cigar was clenched between his white teeth, and there was a sparkle of amusement in his grave eyes. He stood seventy inches in his stockings, and an excellent judge of men who looked him over, noted the set and width of shoulders, the upward lift of chin, the tanned face and flexibility of body, marked him down "soldier"—either American or English.

Malcolm looked up and down the deserted street and then caught the eye of the solitary intooski, a thoughtful-looking man with a short, square beard, looking monstrously stout in his padded green coat, the livery of the Moscow drosky driver.

The man on the sidewalk smiled and walked across the pavement.

"Little brother," he said in fluent Russian, "would you condescend to drive me to the Hotel du Bazar Slav?"

The driver who had noted so approvingly the shape of Malcolm's shoulders did not immediately answer; then:

"British?—I thought you were."

He spoke excellent English, and Malcolm looked up at him bewildered.

"I seem to know your face, too—let me think."

The cab-driver tapped his bearded chin.

"I have it—Hay. I met you four years ago at a dinner party in Kieff—you are the manager of an oil company or something of the sort."

"Right," said the astonished young man, "but—I don't exactly place you."

The drosky driver smiled.

"And yet I dined with you," he said. "I sat next the Grand Duchess Irene—later, when war broke out, I invited you to my headquarters."

"Good God!" Malcolm's jaw dropped. "General Malinkoff!"

"Commanding the 84th Caucasian Division," said the bearded man dryly, "and now commanding one little horse. If you will get into my excellent cab I will drive you to a restaurant where we may eat and drink and be almost merry for—fifty roubles."

Malcolm stepped into the little drosky like a man in a dream. Malinkoff! He remembered him, a fine figure on a horse, riding through Kieff at the head of a glittering throng of staff officers. There was a function at the Grand Hotel to meet the new Commander, a great parade at that ancient palace in his honour—Malcolm had come in from the oil-fields partly to meet him at dinner—partly for news of one who had of a sudden vanished from his life.

The drosky drove furiously through the east end of the town, and the passenger noted that the driver was careful to avoid the big thoroughfares which led to the Krasnaya Plotzad and that centre of Moscow which is the Kremlin.

Presently it drew up before a small eating-house in a poor street, and the driver hoisted himself to the ground. He left his horse unattended and, leading the way, pushed open the swing doors of the restaurant and passed down a long, low-ceilinged room crowded with diners, to a table at the far end.

"Sit down, Mr. Hay. I can promise you a fair but by no means sybarite feast—good morning, Nicholas Vassilitsky."

He nodded pleasantly to a grey-haired man in a workman's blouse sitting at the next table, and the man addressed rose stiffly, bowed and sat down.

"If you wish your clothes valeted whilst you are in Moscow, I recommend my friend," said the driver, snapping his fingers towards a stout waitress. "Colonel Nicholas Vassilitsky is not only an excellent Director of Military Intelligence but he can press a pair of trousers with any man."

He gave his orders briefly, and turned to his companion.

"First of all, let me interrogate you. You are on your way to Petrograd?"

"Yes—I am on my way home. During the war I have been controlling allied supplies in Little Russia—the Revolution stopped that."

"Fortunate man—to have a country," said General Malinkoff, and he spoke seriously and without bitterness. "A country and an army—coherent, disciplined comrades in arms."

He shrugged his padded shoulders.

"Yes—you are on your way to your home? It will take you months to leave the country—if you ever leave it. I tried to leave last month. I am a reactionary with a leaning toward discipline. I cannot breathe the air of democracy. I used to think I had Liberal ideas. There was a time when I thought that a day would dawn when the world would be a great United States of Free People. Ah, well—I am still a reactionary."

Malcolm knew that behind those grave eyes was a world of laughter, that beneath the solemn words was a gentle irony, and yet for the while he could not distinguish how much of tragedy there was in the man's fun.

"But why are you——"

"Driving a cab?" The general finished the sentence. "Because, my friend, I am human. I must eat, for example; I must have a room to sleep in. I need cigarettes, and clean shirts at least three times a week—for God's sake never let that be known. I must also have warm clothes for the winter—in fact, I must live."

"But haven't you—money?" Malcolm felt all a decent man's embarrassment. "Forgive me butting into your affairs, but naturally I'm rather hazed."

"Naturally," laughed the general. "A bottle of kavass, my peach of Turkistan, and a glass for our comrade."

"Long live the Revolution!" wheezed the waitress mechanically.

"Long may it live, little mother!" responded the general.

When the girl had gone he squared round to his companion.

"I have no shame, Mr. Hay—I'm going to let you pay for your own dinner because I cannot in these democratic times pauperize you by paying for you. No, I have no money. My balance in the State bank has been confiscated to the sacred cause of the people. My estate, a hundred versts or so from Moscow, confiscated to the sacred cause of the Revolution, my house in Petrograd is commandeered to the sacred service of the Soviet."

"But your command?"

The general did not smile now. He laid down his knife and fork and threw a glance behind him.

"The men began shooting their officers in March, 1917," he said, lowering his voice. "They executed the divisional staff in May—the democratic spirit was of slow growth. They spared me because I had written a book in my youth urging popular government and had been confined in the fortess of Vilna for my crime. When the army was disbanded I came to Moscow, and the cab was given to me by a former groom of mine, one Isaac Mosservitch, who is now a judge of the high court and dispenses pretty good law, though he cannot sign his own name."

"Mr. Hay," he went on earnestly, "you did wrong to come to Moscow. Get back to Kieff and strike down into the Caucasus. You can reach the American posts outside of Tiflis. You'll never leave Russia. The Bolsheviks have gone mad—blood-mad, murder-mad. Every foreigner is suspect. The Americans and the English are being arrested. I can get you a passport that will carry you to Odessa, and you can reach Batoum, and Baku from there."

Malcolm leant back in his chair and looked thoughtfully at the other.

"Is it so bad?"

"Bad! Moscow is a mad-house. Listen—do you hear anything?"

Above the hum of conversation Malcolm caught a sound like the cracking of whips.

"Rifle-firing," said the general calmly. "There's a counter-revolution in progress. The advanced Anarchists are in revolt against the Bolsheviks. There is a counter-revolution every morning. We cab-drivers meet after breakfast each day and decide amongst ourselves which of the streets shall be avoided. We are pretty well informed—Prince Dalgoursky, who was a captain in the Preopojensky Guard, sells newspapers outside the Soviet headquarters, and the comrades give him tips. One of these days the comrades will shoot him, but for the moment he is in favour, and makes as much as a hundred roubles a day."

The waitress came to the table, and the conversation momentarily ceased. When she had gone Malcolm put the question which he had asked so often in the past four years.

"Can you give me any news of the Grand Duke Yaroslav?"

The other shook his head.

"His Highness was in Petrograd when I heard of him last."

"And—and his daughter? She has been with the Russian Red Cross on the Riga front, I know."

The bearded man shot a queer glance at his companion.

"In what circumstances did you see her last?" he asked.

Malcolm hesitated.

He could hardly tell a stranger of that tragic scene which was enacted in his bedroom. From the moment she had fled through the door he had not set eyes upon her. In the morning when he had wakened, feeling sick and ill, he had been told that the Grand Duke and his daughter had left by the early northern express for the capital. Of Boolba, that hideously blinded figure, he heard nothing. When he inquired for Israel Kensky, men shrugged and said that he had "disappeared." His house was closed and the old man might be in prison or in hiding. Later he was to learn that Kensky had reappeared in Moscow, apparently without hindrance from the authorities. As for Boolba, he had kept his counsel.

"You seem embarrassed," smiled Malinkoff. "I will tell you why I ask. You know that her Grand Ducal Highness was banished from Court for disobedience to the royal will?"

Malcolm shook his head.

"I know nothing—absolutely nothing. Kieff and Odessa are full of refugees and rumours, but one is as much a suspect as the other."

"She would not marry—that is all. I forget the name of the exalted personage who was chosen for her, though I once helped to carry him up to bed—he drank heavily even in those days. God rest him! He died like a man. They hung him in a sack in Peter and Paul, and he insulted the Soviets to the last!"

"So—so she is not married?"

The general was silent, beckoning the waitress.

"My little dear," he said, "what shall I pay you?"

She gave him the scores and they settled.

"Which way now?" asked the general.

"I hardly know—what must a stranger do before he takes up his abode?"

"First find an abode," said the general with a meaning smile. "You asked me to drive you to the Hotel Bazar Slav, my simple but misguided friend! That is a Soviet headquarters. You will certainly go to a place adjacent to the hotel to register yourself, and afterwards to the Commissary to register all over again, and, if you are regarded with approval, which is hardly likely, you will be given a ticket which will enable you to secure the necessities of life—the tickets are easier to get than the food."

The first call at the house near the Bazar Slav gave them neither trouble nor results. The Soviet headquarters was mainly concerned with purely administrative affairs, and the organization of its membership. Its corridors and doorway were crowded with soldiers wearing the familiar red armlet, and when Malinkoff secured an interview with a weary looking and unkempt official, who sat collarless in his shirt sleeves at a table covered with papers, that gentleman could do no more than lean back in his chair and curse the interrupters volubly.

"We might have dispensed with the headquarters visit," said Malinkoff, "but it is absolutely necessary that you should see the Commissary unless you want to be pulled out of your bed one night and shot before you're thoroughly awake. By the way, we have an interesting American in gaol—by his description I gather he is what you would call a gun-man."

Malcolm stared.

"Here—a gun-man?"

Malinkoff nodded.

"He held up the Treasurer-General of the Soviet and relieved him of his wealth. I would like to have met him—but I presume he is dead. Justice is swift in Moscow, especially for those who hold up the officials of the Revolution."

"What sort of justice do these people administer?" asked Malcolm curiously.

Malinkoff shrugged his padded shoulders.

"Sometimes I think that the very habit of justice is dead in this land," he said. "On the whole they are about as just and fair as was the old regime—that is not saying much, is it? The cruelty of our rule to-day is due rather to ignorance than to ill will. A few of the men higher up are working off their old grievances and are profiting enormously, but the rank and file of the movement are labouring for the millennium."

"I think they're mad," said Malcolm.

"All injustice is mad," replied Malinkoff philosophically. "Now get into my little cab, and I will drive you to the Commissary."

The Commissary occupied a large house near the Igerian Gate. It was a house of such noble proportions that at first Malcolm thought it was one of the old public offices, and when Malinkoff had drawn up at the gate he put the question.

"That is the house of the Grand Duke Yaroslav," said Malinkoff quietly. "I think you were inquiring about him a little earlier in the day."

The name brought a little pang to Malcolm's heart, and he asked no further questions. There was a sentry on the podyasde—an untidy, unshaven man, smoking a cigarette—and a group of soldiers filled the entrance, evidently the remainder of the guard.

The Commissary was out. When would he be back? Only God knew. He had taken "the Little Mother" for a drive in the country, or perhaps he had gone to Petrograd—who knew? There was nobody to see but the Commissary—on this fact they insisted with such vehemence that Malcolm gathered that whoever the gentleman was, he brooked no rivals and allowed no possible supplanter to stand near his throne.

They came back at four o'clock in the afternoon, but the Commissary was still out. It was nine o'clock, after five inquiries, that the sentry replied "Yes" to the inevitable question.

"Now you will see him," said Malinkoff, "and the future depends upon the potency of your favourite patron saint."

Malcolm stopped in the doorway.

"General——" he said.

"Not that word," said Malinkoff quickly. "Citizen or comrade—comrade for preference."

"I feel that I am leading you into danger—I have been horribly selfish and thoughtless. Will it make any difference to you, your seeing him?"

Malinkoff shook his head.

"You're quite right, it is always dangerous to attract the attention of the Committee for Combatting the Counter-Revolution," he said, "but since I have taken you in hand I might as well see him as stay outside on my cab, because he is certain to inquire who brought you here, and it might look suspicious if I did not come in with you. Besides, somebody will have to vouch for you as a good comrade and friend of the Soviet."

He was half in earnest and half joking, but wholly fatalistic.

As they went up the broad spiral staircase which led to the main floor of the Yaroslav Palace, Malcolm had qualms. He heartily cursed himself for bringing this man into danger. So far as he was concerned, as he told himself, there was no risk at all, because he was a British traveller, having no feeling one way or the other toward the Soviet Government. But Malinkoff would be a marked man, under suspicion all the time. Before the office of the Commissary was a sentry without rifle. He sat at a table which completely blocked the doorway, except for about eight inches at one side. He inquired the business of the visitors, took their names and handed them to a soldier, and with a sideways jerk of his head invited them to squeeze past him into the bureau.



CHAPTER XI

THE COMMISSARY WITH THE CROOKED NOSE

There were a dozen men in the room in stained military overcoats and red armlets. One, evidently an officer, who carried a black portfolio under his arm, was leaning against the panelled wall, smoking and snapping his fingers to a dingy white terrier that leapt to his repeated invitations.

At the table, covered with documents, were two people, the man and the woman.

She, sprawling indolently forward, her head upon her arm, her strong brown face turned to the man, was obviously a Jewess. The papers were streaked and greasy where her thick black ringlets had rested, and the ashes of her cigarette lay in little untidy heaps on the table.

The man was burly, with a great breadth of shoulder and big rough hands. But it was his face which arrested the feet of Malcolm and brought him to a sudden halt the moment he came near enough to see and recognize the Commissary.

It was not by his bushy red beard nor the stiff, upstanding hair, but by the crooked nose, that he recognized Boolba, sometime serving-man to the Grand Duke Yaroslav. Malcolm, looking at the sightless eyes, felt his spine go creepy.

Boolba lifted his head sharply at the sound of an unfamiliar footfall.

"Who is this?" he asked. "Sophia Kensky, you who are my eyes, tell me who is this?"

"Oh, a boorjoo," said the woman lazily.

"A foreigner too—who are you, boorjoo?"

"A Britisher," said Malcolm.

Boolba lifted his chin and turned his face at the voice.

"A Britisher," he repeated slowly. "The man on the oil-fields. Tell me your name."

"Hay—Malcolm Hay," said Malcolm, and Boolba nodded.

His face was like a mask and he expressed no emotion.

"And the other?"

"Malinkoff!" snapped the voice at Malcolm's side, and Boolba nodded.

"Commanding an army—I remember. You drive a cab, comrade. Are there any complaints against this man?"

He turned his face to Sophia Kensky, and she shook her head.

"Are there any complaints against this man, Sophia?" he repeated.

"None that I know. He is an aristocrat and a friend of the Romanoffs."

"Huh!" The grunt sounded like a note of disappointment. "What do you want?"

"The stranger wishes permission to remain in Moscow until he can find a train to the north," said Malinkoff.

Boolba made no reply. He sat there, his elbows on the table, his fingers twining and untwining the thick red hair of his beard.

"Where does he sleep to-night?" he asked after awhile.

"He sleeps in my stable, near the Vassalli Prospekt," said Malinkoff.

Boolba turned to the woman, who was lighting a new cigarette from the end of the old one, and said something in a low, growling tone.

"Do as you wish, my little pigeon," she said audibly.

Again his hand went to his beard and his big mouth opened in meditation. Then he said curtly:

"Sit down."

There was no place to sit, and the two men fell back amongst the soldiers.

Again the two at the table consulted, and then Sophia Kensky called a name. The man in a faded officer's uniform came forward, his big black portfolio in his hand, and this he laid on the table, opening the flap and taking out a sheaf of papers.

"Read them to me, Sophia," said Boolba. "Read their names."

He groped about on the table and found first a rubber stamp and then a small, flat ink-pad. Sophia lifted the first of the papers and spelt out the names.

"Mishka Sasanoff," she said, and the man growled.

"An upstart woman and very ugly," he said. "I remember her. She used to whip her servants. Tell me, Sophia, my life, what has she done now?"

"Plotted to destroy the Revolution," said the woman.

"Huh!" grunted the man, as he brought his rubber stamp to the paper, passing it across to the waiting officer, who replaced it in his portfolio. "And the next?"

"Paul Geslkin," she said and passed the document to him. "Plotting to overthrow the Revolution."

"A boorjoo, a tricky young man, in league with the priests," he said, and again his stamp came down upon the paper, and again the paper went across the table into the portfolio of the officer.

The soldiers about Malcolm and his friend had edged away, and they were alone.

"What are these?" whispered Malcolm.

"Death warrants," replied Malinkoff laconically, and for the second time a cold chill ran down Malcolm's spine.

Name after name were read out, and the little rubber stamp, which carried death to one and sorrow to so many, thudded down upon the paper. Malcolm felt physically ill. The room was close and reeked of vile tobacco fumes. There was no ventilation, and the oil lamps made the apartment insufferably hot. An hour, two hours passed, and no further notice was paid to the two men.

"I can't understand it quite," said Malinkoff in a low voice. "Ordinarily this would mean serious trouble, but if the Commissary had any suspicion of you or me, we should have been in prison an hour ago."

Then suddenly Boolba rose.

"What is the hour?" he said.

A dozen voices replied.

"Half-past ten? It is time that the sweeper was here."

He threw back his head and laughed, and the men joined in the laughter. With a great yellow handkerchief, which reminded Malcolm of something particularly unpleasant, Boolba wiped the streams from his sightless eyes and bent down to the woman at his side, and Malcolm heard him say: "What is his name—he told me," and then he stood up.

"Hay," he said, "you are a boorjoo. You have ordered many men to sweep your room. Is it not good that a house should be clean, eh?"

"Very good, Boolba," said Malcolm quietly.

"Boolba he calls me. He remembers well. That is good! I stood behind him, comrades, giving wine and coffee and bowing to this great English lord! Yes, I, Boolba!" he struck his chest, "crawled on my knees to this man, and he calls me Boolba now—Boolba!" he roared ferociously. "Come here! Do this! Clean my boots, Boolba! Come, little Boolba, bow thy neck that I may rest my foot!"

A voice from the door interrupted him.

"Good!" he said. "My sweeper has arrived, Hay. Once a day she sweeps my room and once a day she makes my bed. No ordinary woman will satisfy Boolba. She must come in her furs, drive in her fine carriage from the Nijitnkaya—behold!"

Malcolm looked to the doorway and was struck dumb with amazement.

The girl who came in was dressed better than he expected any woman to be dressed in Moscow. A sable wrap was about her shoulders, a sable toque was on her head. He could not see the worn shoes nor the shabby dress beneath the costly furs; indeed, he saw nothing but the face—the face of his dreams—unchanged, unlined, more beautiful than he had remembered her. She stood stiffly in her pride, her little chin held up, her contemptuous eyes fixed upon the man at the table. Then loosing her wrap, she hung it upon a peg, and opening a cupboard, took out a broad broom.

"Sweep, Irene Yaroslav," said the man.

Malcolm winced at the word, and Malinkoff turned to him sharply.

"You know her?" he said. "Of course you do—I remember. Was that why Boolba kept us waiting?"

"He was butler in the Yaroslav household," said Malcolm in the same tone.

"That explains it," said Malinkoff. "All this is for the humiliation of the Grand Duchess."

"Sweep well, little one," scoffed Boolba from his table. "Does it not do your heart good, Sophia Kensky? Oh, if I had only eyes to see! Does she go on her knees? Tell me, Sophia."

But the woman found no amusement in the sight, and she was not smiling. Her high forehead was knitted, her dark eyes followed every movement of the girl. As Boolba finished speaking she leant forward and demanded harshly:

"Irene Yaroslav, where is Israel Kensky?"

"I do not know," replied the girl, not taking her eyes from her work.

"You lie," said the woman. "You shall tell me where he is and where he has hidden his 'Book of All-Power.' She knows, Boolba."

"Peace, peace!" he said, laying his big hand on her shoulder. "Presently she will tell and be glad to tell. Where is your father, Irene Yaroslav?"

"You know best," she replied, and the answer seemed to afford him amusement.

"He was a religious man," he scoffed. "Did he not believe in miracles? Was there any saint in Kieff he did not patronize? He is with the saints this day," and then, in a fierce whisper to Sophia—"How did she look? Tell me, Sophia. How did she look when I spoke?"

"He died three weeks ago," said Irene quietly, "at the Fortress of Peter and Paul," and Boolba rapped out an oath.

"Who told you? Who told you?" he roared. "Tell me who told you, and I will have his heart out of him! I wanted to tell you that myself!"

"The High Commissary Boyaski," she replied, and Boolba swallowed his rage, for who dared criticize the High Commissaries, who hold power of life and death in their hands, even over their fellow officials? He sank down in his chair again and turned impatiently to Sophia.

"Have you no tongue in your head, Sophia Kensky!" he asked irritably. "Tell me all she does. How is she sweeping—where?"

"By the men, near the big bookcase," said the woman reluctantly.

"Yes, yes," and he nodded his great head.

He rose, walked round the table, and paced slowly to the girl as she stood quietly waiting. Malcolm had no weapon in his pocket. He had been warned by Malinkoff that visitors were searched. But on the table lay a sheathed sword—possibly the mark of authority which Boolba carried. But evidently this ceremony was a nightly occurrence. Boolba did no more than pass his hand over the girl's face.

"She is cool," he said in a disappointed tone. "You do not work hard enough, Irene Yaroslav. To-morrow you shall come with water and shall scrub this room."

The girl made no reply, but as he walked back to his seat of authority she continued her work, her eyes fixed on the floor, oblivious of her surroundings. Presently she worked round the room until she came to where Malcolm stood, and as she did so for the first time she raised her head, and her eyes met his. Again he saw that little trick of hers; her hand went to her mouth, then her head went down, and she passed on as though she had never seen him.

"What did she do, Sophia? Tell me what she did when she came to the Englishman. Did she not see him?"

"She was startled," grumbled Sophia; "that is all. Boolba, let the woman go."

"Nay, nay, my little pigeon, she must finish her work."

"She has finished," said Sophia impatiently; "how long must this go on, Boolba? Is she not an aristocrat and a Romanoff, and are there none of your men who want wives?"

Malcolm felt rather than saw the head of every soldier in the room lift to these words.

"Wait a little," said Boolba. "You forget the book, my little pigeon—the 'Book of All-Power.' I would have that rather than that Irene Yaroslav found a good husband from our comrades. You may go, Irene Yaroslav," he said. "Serge!"

The officer who had taken the death warrants, and who stood waiting for dismissal, came forward.

"Take our little brother Malinkoff and the Britisher Hay and place them both in the prison of St. Basil. They are proved enemies to the Revolution."

"I wonder who will feed my little horse to-night," said Malinkoff as, handcuffed to his companion, he marched through the streets in the light of dawn, en route, as he believed, to certain death.



CHAPTER XII

IN THE PRISON OF ST. BASIL

The temporary prison called by Boolba "St. Basil," was made up of four blocks of buildings. All save one were built of grey granite, and presented, when seen from the courtyard below, tiers of little windows set with monotonous regularity in discoloured walls. The fourth was evidently also of granite, but at some recent period an attempt had been made to cover its forbidding facade with plaster. The workmen had wearied of their good intent and had left off when their labours were half finished, which gave the building the gruesome appearance of having been half skinned. Flush with the four sides of the square was an open concrete trench, approached at intervals by flights of half a dozen stone steps leading to this alley-way.

Malcolm Hay was pushed down one of these, hurried along the alley-way, passing a number of mailed iron doors, and as many barred windows, and was halted before one of the doors whilst the warder who all the time smoked a cigar, produced a key. The door was unlocked, and Hay was thrust in. Malinkoff followed. The door slammed behind them, and they heard the "click-clock" of the steel lock shooting to its socket.

The room was a medium-sized apartment, innocent of furniture save for a table in the centre of the room and a bench which ran round the walls. Light came from a small window giving a restricted view of the courtyard and a barred transom above the doorway. An oblong slit of ground glass behind which was evidently an electric globe served for the night.

There were two occupants of the room, who looked up, one—a grimy, dishevelled priest—blankly, the other with the light of interest in his eyes.

He sat in his shirt-sleeves, his coat being rolled up to serve as a pillow. Above the "bed" hung a Derby hat—an incongruous object. He was short, stout, and fresh coloured, with a startling black moustache elaborately curled at the ends and two grey eyes that were lined around with much laughter. He walked slowly to the party and held out his hand to Malcolm.

"Welcome to the original Bughouse," he said, and from his accent it was impossible to discover whether he was American or English. "On behalf of self an' partner, we welcome you to Bughouse Lodge. When do you go to the chair—he's due to-day," he jerked his thumb at the crooning priest. "I can't say I'm sorry. So far as I am concerned he's been dead ever since they put him here."