The Book of All-Power Part 23

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 pa.s.sed 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, pa.s.sing 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 gla.s.s 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 s.h.i.+rt-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."

Malcolm recognized the little man in a flash. It was his acquaintance of London.

"You don't remember me," smiled Malcolm, "but what is your particular crime?"

The little man's face creased with laughter.

"Shootin' up Tcherekin," he said tersely, and Malinkoff's eyebrows rose.

"You're--Beem--is that how you p.r.o.nounce it?"

"Bim," said the other, "B-I-M. Christian name Cherry--Cherry Bim; see the idea? Named after the angels. Say, when I was a kid--I've got a photograph way home in Brooklyn to prove it--I had golden hair in long ringlets!"

Malinkoff chuckled softly.

"This is the American who held up Tcherekin and nearly got away with ten million roubles," he said.

Cherry Bim had taken down his Derby and had adjusted it at the angle demanded by the circ.u.mstances.

"That's right--but I didn't know they was roubles. I _should_ excite my mentality over waste paper! No, we got word that it was French money."

"There was another man in it?" said Malinkoff, lighting a cigarette--there had been no attempt to search them.

"Don't let that match go out!" begged Cherry Bim, and dug a stub from his waistcoat pocket. "Yes," he puffed, "Isaac Moskava--they killed poor old Issy. He was a good feller, but too--too--what's the word when a feller falls to every dame he meets?"

"Impressionable?" suggested Malcolm.

"That's the word," nodded Cherry Bim; "we'd got away with twenty thousand dollars' worth of real sparklers in Petrograd. They used to belong to a princess, and we took 'em off the lady friends of Groobal, the Food Commissioner, and I suggested we should beat it across the Swedish frontier. But no, he had a girl in Moscow--he was that kind of guy who could smell patchouli a million miles away."

Malcolm gazed at the man in wonderment.

"Do I understand that you are a--a----" He hesitated to describe his companion in misfortune, realizing that it was a very delicate position.

"I'm a cavalier of industry," said Cherry Bim, with a flourish.

"Chevalier is the word you want," suggested Malcolm, responding to his geniality.

"It's all one," said the other cheerfully. "It means crook, I guess?

Don't think," he said seriously, "don't you think that I'm one of those cheap gun-men you can buy for ten dollars, because I'm not. It was the love of guns that brought me into trouble. It wasn't trouble that brought me to the guns. I could use a gun when I was seven," he said.

"My dad--G.o.d love him!--lived in Utah, and I was born at Broke Creek and cut my teeth on a '45. I could shoot the tail-feathers off a fly's wing," he said. "I could shoot the nose off a mosquito."

It was the deceased Isaac Moskava who had brought him to Russia, he said. They had been fellow fugitives to Canada, and Isaac, who had friends in a dozen Soviets, had painted an entrancing picture of the pickings which were to be had in Petrograd. They worked their way across Canada and s.h.i.+pped on a Swedish barque, working their pa.s.sage before the mast. At Stockholm Issy had found a friend, who forwarded them carriage paid to the capital, whereafter things went well.

"Have you got any food?" asked Cherry Bim suddenly. "They starve you here. Did you ever eat _schie_? It's hot water smelling of cabbage."

"Have you been tried?" asked Malinkoff, and the man smiled.

"Tried!" he said contemptuously. "Say, what do you think's goin' to happen to you? Do you think you'll go up before a judge and hire a lawyer to defend you? Not much. If they try you, it's because they've got something funny to tell you. Look here."

He leapt up on to the bench with surprising agility and stood on tiptoe, so that his eyes came level with a little grating in the wall. The opening gave a view of another cell.

"Look," said Cherry Bim, stepping aside, and Malcolm peered through the opening.

At first he could see nothing, for the cell was darker than the room he was in, but presently he distinguished a huddled form lying on the bench, and even as he looked it was galvanized to life. It was an old man who had leaped from the bench mumbling and mouthing in his terror.

"I am awake! I am awake!" he screamed in Russian. "_Gospodar_, observe me! I am awake!"

His wild yells shrunk to a shrill sobbing, and then, with a long sigh, he climbed back to the bench and turned his back to the wall. Malcolm exchanged glances with Malinkoff, who had shared the view.