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

is not the difficulty I thought he would be," reported Malinkoff; "he used to drive Korniloff in the days when he was a divisional general, and he is willing to throw in his lot with ours."

"Can you trust him!" asked Malcolm.

"I think so," said Malinkoff, "unless we shoot him we simply must trust him--what do you think, Mr. Bim?"

"You can call me Cherry," said that worthy. He was eating bread and sour cheese which had been bought at a fabulous price in one of the villages through which they had passed. Here again they might have been compelled to an act which would have called attention to their lawless character, for they had no money, had it not been for Cherry. He financed the party from the lining of his waistcoat (Malcolm remembered that the little man had never discarded this garment, sleeping or waking) and made a casual reference to the diamonds which had gone to his account via a soi-disant princess and the favourite of a Commissary.

"Anyway," he said, "we could have got it from the chauffeur--he's open to reason."

They did not ask him what argument he would have employed, but were glad subsequently that these arguments had not been used.

What was as necessary as food was petrol. Peter the chauffeur said that there were big army supplies in Preopojensky itself, and undertook to steal sufficient to keep the car running for a week.

They waited until it was dark before they left the cover of the wood, and walked in single file along a cart-track to the half a dozen blinking lights that stood for Preopojensky.

The car they had pulled into deeper cover, marking the place with a splinter of mirror broken from its silver frame.

"Nothing like a mirror," explained Cherry Bim. "You've only to strike a match, and it shows a light for you."

The way was a long one, but presently they came to a good road which crossed the track at right angles, but which curved round until it ran parallel with the path they had followed.

"There is the military store," whispered the chauffeur. "I will go now, my little general."

"I trust you, _drushka_," said Malinkoff.

"By the head of my mother I will not betray you," said the man, and disappeared in the darkness.

After this they held a council of war.

"So far as I can remember, Petroff is the silk merchant," said Malinkoff, "and his house is the first big residence we reach coming from this direction. I remember it because I was on duty at the Coronation of the Emperor, and his Imperial Majesty came to Preopojensky, which is a sacred place for the Royal House. Peter the Great lived here."

Luck was with them, for they had not gone far before they heard a voice bellowing a mournful song, and came up with its owner, a worker in the silk mills (they had long since ceased to work) who was under the influence of methylated spirit--a favourite tipple since vodka had been ukased out of existence.

"Ivan Petroff, son of Ivan?" he hiccoughed.

"Yes, my little dove, it is there. He is a boorjoo and an aristocrat, and there is no Czar and no God!--_prikanzerio_--it is ordered by the Soviet!..."

And he began to weep

"No Czar and no God! Long live the Revolution! Evivo! No blessed saints and no Czar! And I was of the Rasholnik!..."

They left him weeping by the roadside.

"The Rasholniks are the dissenters of Russia--this village was a hotbed of them, but they've gone the way of the rest," said Malinkoff sadly.

The house they approached was a big wooden structure ornamented with perfectly useless cupolas and domes, so that Malcolm thought at first that this was one of the innumerable churches in which the village abounded.

There was a broad flight of wooden stairs leading to the door, but this they avoided. A handful of gravel at a likely-looking upper window seemed a solution. The response was immediate. Though no light appeared, the window swung open and a voice asked softly:

"Who is that?"

"We are from Irene," answered Malcolm in the same tone.

The window closed, and presently they heard a door unfastened and followed the sound along the path which ran close to the house. It was a small side door that was opened, and Malcolm led the way through.

Their invisible host closed the door behind them, and they heard the clink of a chain.

"If you have not been here before, keep straight on, touching the wall with your right hand. Where it stops turn sharply to the right," said the unknown rapidly.

They followed his directions, and found the branch passage.

"Wait," said the voice.

The man passed them. They heard him turn a handle.

"Straight ahead you will find the door."

They obeyed, and their conductor struck a match and lit an oil lamp. They were in the long room--they guessed that by the glow of the closed stove they had seen as they entered.

The windows were heavily shuttered and curtained, and even the door was hidden under a thick portiere. The man who had brought them in was middle-aged and poorly dressed, but then this was a time when everybody in Russia was poorly dressed, and his shabbiness did not preclude the possibility of his being the proprietor of the house, as indeed he was.

He was eyeing them with suspicion, not wholly unjustified, for the patent respectability of Cherry's Derby hat was no compensation for the armoury belted about his rotund middle.

But when the man's eyes fell upon Malinkoff, his whole demeanour changed, and he advanced with outstretched hand.

"General Malinkoff," he said, "you remember me; I entertained you at----"

"At Kieff! Of course!" smiled Malinkoff. "I did not know the Ivan Petroff of Moscow was the Ivan of the Ukraine."

"Now, gentlemen, what is your wish?" asked the man, and Malinkoff explained the object of the visit.

Petroff looked serious.

"Of course, I will do anything her Highness wishes," he said. "I saw her yesterday, and she told me that she had a dear friend in St. Basil." Malcolm tried to look unconcerned under Malinkoff's swift scrutiny and failed. "But I think she wished you to meet another--guest."

He paused.

"He has gone into Moscow to-night against my wishes," he said with trouble in his face; "such an old man----"

"Kensky?" said Malcolm quickly.

"Kensky." The tone was short. "I told him that no good would come of it--her Highness was married to-night."

Malcolm took a step forward, but it was an unsteady step.

"Married?" he repeated. "To whom was she married?"

Petroff looked down at the floor as though he dare not meet the eye of any man and say so monstrous a thing.

"To the servant Boolba," he said.


CHAPTER XV

THE RED BRIDE


Irene Yaroslav came back to the home which had always been associated in her mind with unhappy memories, to meet the culminating disaster which Fate had wrought. Whatever thoughts of escape she may have treasured in secret were cut into by the sure knowledge that she was watched day and night, and were now finally terminated by the discovery that the big apartment house, a suite of which Boolba had taken for her disposal when he had ousted her from her father's house, was practically in possession of the Soviet Guard.

She drove to the palace with an undisguised escort of mounted men, one on either side of the carriage, one before and one behind, and went up the stairs--those grim stairs which had frightened her as a child and had filled her nights with dreams, passing on her way the now empty bureau which it had been Boolba's whim for her to keep.

Maria Badisikaya, an officer of the Committee for the Suppression of the Counter-Revolution, formerly an operative in the Moscow Cigarette Company, was waiting in the small drawing-room which still retained some of its ancient splendour. Maria was a short, stumpy woman with a slight moustache and a wart on her chin, and was dressed in green satin, cut low to disclose her generous figure. About her stiff, coal-black hair was a heavy diamond bandeau. She was sitting on a settee, her feet hardly touching the ground, cleaning her nails with a little pocket-knife as the girl entered. Evidently this was her maid of honour, and she could have laughed.

The woman glowered up at her and jumped briskly to her feet, closing the knife and slipping it into her corsage.

"You are late, Irene Yaroslav," she said shrilly. "I have something better to do than to sit here waiting for a boorjoo. There is a committee meeting at ten o'clock to-night. How do you imagine I can attend that? Come, come!"

She bustled into an ante-room.

"Here is your dress, my little bride. See, there is everything, even to stockings--Boolba has thought of all, yet he will not see! La! la! What a man!"

Numerous articles of attire were laid out on chairs and on the back of the sofa, and the girl, looking at them, shuddered. It was Boolba's idea--nobody but Boolba would have thought of it. Every garment was of red, blood red, a red which seemed to fill the room with harsh sound. Stockings of finest silk, shoes of russian leather, cobweb underwear--but all of the same hideous hue. In Russia the word "red" is also the word "beautiful." In a language in which so many delicate shades of meaning can be expressed, this word serves a double purpose, doing duty for that which, in the eyes of civilized people, is garish, and that which is almost divine.

Maria's manner changed suddenly. From the impatient, slightly pompous official, conscious of her position, she became obsequious and even affectionate. Possibly she remembered that the girl was to become the wife of the most powerful man in Moscow, whose word was amply sufficient to send even Gregory Prodol to the execution yard, and Gregory's position seemed unassailable.

"I will help you to dress, my little dear," she said. "Let me take your hat, my little dove."

"I would rather be alone," said the girl. "Will you please wait in the next room, Maria Badisikaya?"

"But I can help you so, my little darling," said the woman, fussing about. "A bride has no luck for thirty years if she puts on her own stockings."

"Go!" said the girl imperiously, and the woman cringed.

"Certainly, Excellenz," she stammered, and went out without another word.

The girl changed quickly, and surveyed herself in the pier glass at the end of the room. It was striking but horrible. There came a tap at the door and the agitated Maria entered.

"He has sent for you, my little dove," she said. "Come, take my arm. Do not tremble, my little pretty. Boolba is a good man and the greatest man in Moscow."

She would have taken the girl's arm, but Irene waved her aside, and walked swiftly from the drawing-room into the grand saloon. She wanted the ordeal over as soon as possible.

The room was crowded, and though many of the electric lamps in the great glass chandelier were not in working order and a broken fuse had put half the wall brackets in darkness, the light was almost dazzling. This wonderful saloon, where ten Czars had eaten bread and salt with ten generations of Yaroslavs, was thick with humanity. Some of