The Book of All-Power

The door of the room on his left was open, and into this they walked. It was empty, but scarcely had they closed the door than there were footsteps outside. Cherry, with a gun in each hand, a hard and ugly grin on his fat face, covered the door, but the footsteps passed.

There was a babble of voices outside and a rattle and creak of gates. Malcolm crept to the one window which the office held (he guessed it was here that Cherry had written his "statement"), and peeped cautiously forth.

A big closed auto was entering the gate, and he pulled his head back. Cherry was at his side.

"Somebody visiting—a fellow high up," whispered the latter hoarsely; "they'll come in here, the guy we left in the cell told me he'd want this room. Try that door!"

He pointed to a tall press and Malinkoff was there in a second. The press was evidently used for the storage of stationery. There was one shelf, half way up, laden with packages of paper, and Malinkoff lifted one end. The other slipped and the packets dropped with a crash. But the purring of the auto in the yard was noisy enough to drown the sound unless somebody was outside the door.

"Three can squeeze in—you go first, Mr. Hay."

It was more than a squeeze, it was a torture, but the door closed on them.

Malcolm had an insane desire to laugh, but he checked it at the sound of a voice—for it was the voice of Boolba.

"I cannot stay very long, comrade," he was saying as he entered the room, "but...."

The rest was a mumble.

"I will see that she is kept by herself," said a strange voice, evidently of someone in authority at the prison.

Malcolm bit his lips to check the cry that rose.

"Irene!"

"…" Boolba's deep voice was again a rumble.

"Yes, comrade, I will bring her in … let me lead you to a chair."

He evidently went to the door and called, and immediately there was a tramp of feet.

"What does this mean, Boolba?"

Malcolm knew the voice—he had heard it before—and his relief was such that all sense of his own danger passed.

"Sophia Kensky," Boolba was speaking now, "you are under arrest by order of the Soviet."

"Arrest!" the word was screamed, "me–?"

"You are plotting against the Revolution, and your wickedness has been discovered," said Boolba. "Matinshka! Little mama, it is ordered!"

"You lie! You lie!" she screeched. "You blind devil—I spit on you! You arrest me because you want the aristocrat Irene Yaroslav! Blind pig!"

"Prekanzeno, dushinka! It is ordered, dear little soul," murmured Boolba. "I go back alone—listen! My auto is turning. I go back alone, drushka, and who shall be my eyes now that my little mama is gone?"

They heard the chair pushed back as he rose and the scream and flurry as she leapt at him.

"Keep her away, little comrade," roared Boolba. "Keep her away—I am blind; her father blinded me; keep her away!"

It was Cherry Bim who slipped first from the cupboard.

Under the menace of his guns the soldiers fell back.

"Auto Russki—hold up the guard, Hay," he muttered, and Malinkoff jumped through the doorway to the step of the big car in one bound.

Cherry held the room. He spoke no Russian, but his guns were multi-lingual. There was a shot outside before he fired three times into the room. Then he fell back, slamming the door, and jumped into the car as it moved through the open gateway.

Malcolm was on one footboard, Malinkoff by the side of the chauffeur on the other.

So they rocked through the ill-paved streets of Moscow, and rushed the suburban barricade without mishap.

CHAPTER XIV

IN THE HOLY VILLAGE

"Preopojensky, but by a circuitous route," said Malinkoff, speaking across the chauffeur. "What about the wires?"

He looked up at the telegraph lines, looping from pole to pole, and Malcolm thrust his head into the window of the limousine to communicate this danger to the sybaritic Mr. Bim, who was spraying himself with perfume from a bottle he had found in the well-equipped interior of the car.

"Stop," said Cherry. "We're well away from Moscow."

At a word from Malinkoff the chauffeur brought the car to a standstill and Cherry slipped out, revolver in hand.

Then to the amazement of Malcolm and the unfeigned admiration of the general, Cherry Bim made good his boast. Four times his gun cracked and at each shot a line broke.

"To be repeated at intervals," said Cherry, climbing into the car. "Wake me in half an hour," and, curling himself up in the luxurious depths of swansdown cushions, he fell asleep.

Happily Malinkoff knew the country to an inch. They were not able to avoid the villages without avoiding the roads, but they circumnavigated the towns. At nightfall they were in the depths of a wood which ran down to the edge of the big lake on which the holy village of Preopojensky stands.

"The chauffeur 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."