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

might see the girl once more before he fell a victim to the malice of the ex-butler.

To his agony of mind was added a more prosaic distress--he was ravenously hungry, a sensation which was shared by his two companions.

"I've never known them to be so late," complained Cherry Bim regretfully. "There's usually a bit of black bread, if there's nothing else."

He walked to the window and, leaning his arms on the sill, looked disconsolately forth.

"Hi, Ruski!" he yelled at some person unseen, and the other inmates of the room could see him making extravagant pantomime, which produced nothing in the shape of food.

It was three o'clock in the afternoon, and Malcolm was dozing, when they heard the grate of the key in the lock and the slipping of bolts, then the door opened slowly. Malcolm leapt forward.

"Irene--your Highness!" he gasped.

The girl walked into the cell without a word, and put the big basket she had been carrying upon the table. There was a faint colour in the face she turned to Malcolm. Her hands were outstretched to him, and he caught them in his own and held them together.

"Poor little girl!"

She smiled.

"Mr. Hay, you have made good progress in your Russian since I met you last," she said. "General Malinkoff, isn't it?"

The general stood strictly to attention, his hand at his cap--a fact which seemed to afford great amusement to the gaoler who stood in the doorway, and who was an interested spectator.

"It was Boolba's idea that I should bring you food," said the girl, "and I have been ordered to bring it to you every day. I have an idea that he thinks"--she stopped--"that he thinks I like you," she went on frankly, "and of course that is true. I like all people who fly into danger to rescue distressed females," she smiled.

"Can anything be done for you?" asked Malcolm in a low voice. "Can't you get away from this place? Have you no friends?"

She shook her head.

"I have one friend," she said, "who is in even greater danger than I--no, I do not mean you. Mr. Hay"--she lowered her voice--"there may be a chance of getting you out of this horrible place, but it is a very faint chance. Will you promise me that if you get away you will leave Russia at once?"

He shook his head.

"You asked me that once before, your Highness," he said. "I am less inclined to leave Russia now than I was in the old days, when the danger was not so evident."

"Highness"--it was the priest who spoke--"your magnificence has brought me food also? Highness, I served your magnificent father. Do you not remember Gregory the priest in the cathedral at Vladimir?"

She shook her head.

"I have food for you, father," she said, "but I do not recall you."

"Highness" he spoke eagerly and his eyes were blazing, "since you go free, will you not say a prayer for me before the miraculous Virgin? Or, better still, before the tomb of the holy and sainted Dimitry in the cathedral of the Archangel! And, lady," he seized her hand in entreaty, "before the relics of St. Philip the Martyr in our Holy Cathedral of the Assumption."

Gently the girl disengaged her arm.

"Father, I will pray for you," she said. "Good-bye!" she said to Malcolm, and again extended both her hands, "till to-morrow!"

Malcolm raised the hands to his lips, and stood like a man in a dream, long after the door had slammed behind her.

"Gee!" said the voice of Cherry Bim with a long sigh. "She don't remember me, an' I don't know whether to be glad or sorry--some peach!"

Malcolm turned on him savagely, but it was evident the man had meant no harm.

"She is a friend of mine," he said sharply.

"Sure she is," said the placid Cherry, unpacking the basket, "and the right kind of friend. If this isn't caviare! Say, shut your eyes, and you'd think you were at Rectoris."


CHAPTER XIII

CHERRY BIM MAKES A STATEMENT


Malcolm was awakened in the night by a scream. He sprang from the bench, his face bathed in perspiration.

"What was that?" he asked hoarsely.

Malinkoff was sitting on the edge of the bench rubbing his eyes.

"I heard something," he yawned.

Only Cheery Bim had not moved. He was lying on his back with his knees up and his hands behind his head, wide awake.

"What was it, Cherry?" asked Malcolm.

Slowly the little man rose and stretched himself.

"I wonder what the time is," he said evasively.

Malcolm looked at his watch.

"Half-past three," he replied.

"He's asleep anyway," said Cherry, nodding towards the recumbent figure of the priest. "He might have been useful--but I forgot the old man's a Jew."

"Do you mean----?" said Malinkoff and glanced at the gate.

Cherry nodded again.

"I never thought they'd carry it out according to programme," he said, "but they did. I heard 'em come in."

There was the thud of a door closing.

"That's the door of his cell. They have taken him out, I guess. The last fellow they killed in there they hung on a hook--just put a rope round his neck and pushed him in a bag. He was a long time dying," he said reflectively, and Malcolm saw that the little man's lower lip was trembling in spite of his calm, matter-of-fact tone.

Malinkoff had walked across to the priest, and had shaken him awake.

"Father," he said, "a man has just died in the next cell. Would you not read the Office of the Dead?"

The priest rose with an ill grace.

"Why should I be awakened from my sleep?" he complained. "Who is this man?"

"I do not know his name," said Malinkoff, "but he is a Jew----"

"A Jew!"

The priest spat on the ground contemptuously.

"What, I speak an office for a Jew?" he demanded, wrath in his face.

"For a man, for a human fellow creature," said Malinkoff sternly, but the priest had gone back to his hard couch, nor would he leave it, and Malinkoff, with a shrug of his shoulders, went back to his bed.

"That is Russia--eternal Russia," he said, and he spoke without bitterness. "Neither Czar nor Soviet will alter it."

They did not go to sleep again. Something was speaking to them from the next cell, something that whimpered and raised its hands in appeal, and they welcomed the daylight, but not the diversion which daylight brought. Again the door banged open, and this time a file of soldiers stood in the entrance.

"Boris Michaelovitch," said the dark figure in the entrance, "it is the hour!"

The priest rose slowly. His face was grey, the hands clasped together before him shook; nevertheless, he walked firmly to the door.

Before the soldiers had closed around him he turned and raised his hand in blessing, and Malinkoff fell upon his knees.

Again the door slammed and the bolts shot home, and they waited in silence.

There was no sound for ten minutes, then came a crash of musketry, so unexpected and so loud that it almost deafened them. A second volley followed, and after an interval a third, and then silence. Cherry Bim wiped his forehead.

"Three this morning," he said unsteadily. "Anyway, it's better than hanging."

There was a long pause, and then:

"Say," he said, "I'm sorry I said I was glad that guy was going."

Malcolm understood.

The day brought Irene at the same hour as on the previous afternoon. She looked around for the priest, and apparently understood, for she made no reference to the missing man.

"If you can get away from here," she said, "go to Preopojenski. That is a village a few versts from here. I tell you this, but----"

She did not complete her sentence, but Malcolm could guess from the hopeless despair in her voice.

"Excuse me, miss," interrupted Cherry Bim. "Ain't there any way of getting a gun for a man? Any old kind of gun," he said urgently; "Colt, Smith-Wesson, Browning, Mauser--I can handle 'em all--but Colt preferred."

She shook her head sadly.

"It is impossible," she said. "I am searched every time I come in through the lodge."

"In a pie," urged Cherry. "I've read in stories how you can get these things in a pie. Couldn't you make----"

"It's quite impossible," she said. "Even bread is cut into four pieces. That is done in the lodge."

Cherry Bim cast envious eyes on the tall guard at the doorway. He had a long revolver.

"I'll bet," said Cherry bitterly, "he don't know any more about a gun than a school-marm. Why, he couldn't hit a house unless he was inside of it."

"I must go now," said the girl hastily.

"Tell me one thing," said Malcolm. "You spoke yesterday of having one friend. Is that friend Israel Kensky?"

"Hush!" she said.

She took his hand in both of hers.

"Good-bye, Mr. Hay," she said. "I may not come to-morrow."

Her voice was hard and strained, and she seemed anxious to end the interview.

"Boolba told me this morning," she went on, speaking rapidly but little above a whisper, "that he had----certain plans about me. Good-bye, Mr. Hay!"

This time she shook hands with Malinkoff.

"Don't forget the village of Preopojensky," she repeated. "There is only the slightest chance, but if God is merciful and you reach the outside world, you will find the house of Ivan Petroff--please remember that." And in a minute she was gone.

"I wonder what was wrong," said Malcolm. "She was not so frightened when she came in, then she changed as though----"

Looking round he had seen, only for the fraction of a second, a hand through the grating over the bench. Someone had been listening in the next cell, and the girl had seen him. He sprang upon a bench and peered through, in time to see the man vanish beyond the angle of his vision. Malinkoff was lighting his last cigarette.

"My friend," he said, "I have an idea that in the early hours of the morning you and I will go the same way as the unfortunate priest."

"What makes you think so?" asked Malcolm quickly.

"Not only do I, but the Grand Duchess thinks so also," said Malinkoff. "Possibly this is news."

Again the door was opened, and this time it was an officer of the Red Guard who appeared. He had evidently been chosen because of his knowledge of English.

"I want the thief," he said tersely in that language.

"That sounds remarkably like me," said Cherry.

He put on his Derby hat slowly and went forth in his shirt-sleeves. They watched him through the window being taken across the courtyard and through the archway which led to the prison offices and the outer gate.

"They haven't released him, I suppose?" asked Malcolm, and Malinkoff shook his head.

"He is to be interrogated," he said. "Evidently there is something which Boolba wants to know about us, and which he believes this man will tell."

Malcolm was silent, turning matters over in his mind.

"He won't tell anything that will injure us," he said.

"But the man is a crook," said Malinkoff; "that is the word,