Old Man Savarin and Other Stories Part 24

"Madman!" cried Nolenki. "Do you think to--"

He stopped as if paralyzed. I suppose he had suddenly understood that the explosion of a bomb in that small, high-walled yard would kill every man in it.

"One!" cried Verbitzsky.

"But I may not hit him!" said I.

"No matter. If it explodes within thirty feet of him he will move no more."

I took one step forward and raised the bomb. Did I mean to throw it? I do not know. I think not. But I knew we must make the threat or be captured and hung. And I felt certain that the bomb would be exploded anyway when Verbitzsky should say "Five." He would then throw his, and mine would explode by the concussion.

"Two!" said Verbitzsky.

Dmitry Nolenki had lowered his pistol. He glanced behind him uneasily.

"If he runs, throw it!" said Verbitzsky, loudly. "THREE!"

The chief of the Moscow secret police was reputed a brave man, but he was only a cruel one. Now his knees trembled so that we could see them shake, and his teeth chattered in the still cold night. Verbitzsky told me afterward that he feared the man's slow brain had become so paralyzed by fright that he might not be able to think and obey and jump down. That would have placed my comrade and me in a dreadful dilemma, but quite a different one from what you may suppose.

As if to make Nolenki reflect, Verbitzsky spoke more slowly:--

"If Dmitry Nolenki jumps down into this pit _before_ I say five, do _not_ throw the bomb at him. You understand, Michael, do not throw if he jumps down instantly. FOUR!"

Nolenki's legs were so weak that he could not walk to the edge. In trying to do so he stumbled, fell, crawled, and came in head first, a mere heap.

"Wise Nolenki!" said my comrade, with a laugh. Then in his tone of desperate resolution, "Nolenki, get down on your hands and knees, and put your head against that wall. Don't move now--if you wish to live."

"Now, men," he cried to the others in military fas.h.i.+on, "right about, face!"

They hesitated, perhaps fearful that he would throw at them when they turned.

"About! instantly!" he cried. They all turned.

"Now, men, you see your chief. At the word 'March,' go and kneel in a row beside him, your heads against that wall. Hump your backs as high as you can. If any man moves to get out, all will suffer together. You understand?"

"Yes! yes! yes!" came in an agony of abas.e.m.e.nt from their lips.

"March!"

When they were all kneeling in a row, Verbitzsky said to me clearly:--

"Michael, you can easily get to the top of that wall from any one of their backs. No man will dare to move. Go! Wait on the edge! Take your bomb with you!"

I obeyed. I stood on a man's back. I laid my bomb with utmost care on the wall, over which I could then see. Then I easily lifted myself out by my hands and elbows.

"Good!" said Verbitzsky. "Now, Michael, stand there till I come. If they try to seize me, throw your bomb. We can all die together."

In half a minute he had stepped on Nolenki's back. Nolenki groaned with abas.e.m.e.nt. Next moment Verbitzsky was beside me.

"Give me your bomb. Now, Michael," he said loudly, "I will stand guard over these wretches till I see you beyond the freight-sheds. Walk at an ordinary pace, lest you be seen and suspected."

"But you? They'll rise and fire at you as you run," I said.

"Of course they will. But you will escape. Here! Good-bye!"

He embraced me, and whispered in my ear:

"Go the opposite way from the freight-sheds. Go out toward the Petrovsky Gardens. There are few police there. Run hard after you've walked out under the bridge and around the abutments. You will then be out of hearing."

"Go, dear friend," he said aloud, in a mournful voice. "I may never see you again. Possibly I may have to destroy myself and all here.

Go!"

I obeyed precisely, and had not fairly reached the yard's end when Verbitzsky, running very silently, came up beside me.

"I think they must be still fancying that I'm standing over them," he chuckled. "No, they are shooting! Now, out they come!"

From where we now stood in shadow we could see Nolenki and his men rush furiously out from under the bridge. They ran away from us toward the freight-sheds, shouting the alarm, while we calmly walked home to our unsuspected lodgings.

Not till then did I think of the bombs.

"Where are they?" I asked in alarm.

"I left them for the police. They will ruin Nolenki--it was he who sent poor Zina to Siberia and her death."

"Ruin him?" I said, wondering.

"Yes."

"Why?"

"They were not loaded."

"Not loaded!"

"That's what Boris whispered to me in the wool-shed office. He meant to load them to-morrow before going to His Imperial Majesty's train.

Nolenki will be laughed to death in Moscow, if not sent to Siberia."

Verbitzsky was right. Nolenki, after being laughed nearly to death, was sent to Siberia in disgrace, and we both worked in the same gang with him for eight months before we escaped from the Ural Mines. No doubt he is working there yet.

THE END.