The Book of All-Power by Edgar Wallace (the best books to read .TXT) 📕

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