The Book of All-Power

Petroff blinked twice, and on his face was a look as though he could not believe his ears. The girl shrank to Malcolm's side, and Malinkoff stroked his beard softly. Only Cherry Bim seemed to realize the necessities of the moment, and he pulled both guns simultaneously and laid them noiselessly on the table before him.

"Open in the name of the Revolution!"

A hiss from Kensky brought them round. He beckoned them through the door by which they had made their original entry to the room, and pointed to the light. He gripped Petroff by the shoulder.

"Upstairs to your bedroom, friend," he said. "Put on your night-shirt and talk to them through the window."

Down the two passages they passed and came to the little door, which Kensky unchained and opened. He put his lips close to Malinkoff's ears.

"Do you remember the way you came?" he asked, and the general nodded and led the way.

Last but one came Cherry Bim, a '45 in each hand. There were no soldiers in view at the back of the house, but Malinkoff could hear their feet on some unknown outside road, and realized that the house was in process of being surrounded, and had the man who knocked at the door waited until this encirclement had been completed, there would have been no chance of escape.

They struck the main road, and found the cart track leading to the wood, and none challenged them. There was no sound from the house, and apparently their flight had not been discovered.

Kensky brought up the rear in spite of Cherry's frenzied injunctions, delivered in the four words of Russian which he knew, to get a move on. They had reached the fringe of the wood when the challenge came. Out of the shadow rode a horseman, and brought his charger across the path.

"Halt!" he cried.

The party halted, all except Cherry, who stepped from the path and moved swiftly forward, crouching low, to give the sentry no background.

"Who is that?" asked the man on the horse. "Speak, or I'll fire!"

He had unslung his carbine, and they heard the click of the bolt as the breech opened and closed.

"We are friends, little father," said Malinkoff.

"Give me your names," said the sentry, and Malinkoff recited with glib ease a list of Russian patronymics.

"That is a lie," said the man calmly. "You are boorjoos—I can tell by your voices," and without further warning he fired into the thick of them.

The second shot which came from the night followed so quickly upon the first that for the second time in like circumstances the girl thought only one had been fired. But the soldier on the horse swayed and slid to the earth before she knew what had happened.

"Go right ahead," said the voice of Cherry Bim.

He had caught the bridle of the frightened horse, and had drawn him aside. They quickened their steps and came up to the car, which the thoughtful chauffeur had already cranked up at the sound of the shots.

"Where is Kensky?" asked Malcolm suddenly, "did you see him, Cherry?"

A pause.

"Why, no," said Cherry, "I didn't see him after the lamented tragedy."

"We can't leave the old man," said Malcolm.

"Wait," said the little gun-man. "I will go back and look for him."

Five minutes, ten passed and still there was no sign or sound of Israel Kensky or of Cherry. Then a shot broke the stillness of the night, and another and another.

"Two rifles and one revolver," said Malinkoff. "Get into the car, Highness. Are you ready, Peter?"

There was another shot and then a fusillade. Then came slow footsteps along the cart track, and the sound of a man's windy breathing.

"Take him, somebody," said Cherry.

Malinkoff lifted the inanimate figure from Cherry's shoulder and carried him into the car. A voice from the darkness shouted a command, there was a flash of fire and the "zip" of a bullet.

"Let her go, Percy," said Cherry, and blazed away with both guns into the darkness.

He leapt for the footboard and made it by a miracle, and only once did they hear him cry as if in pain.

"Are you hit?" asked Malcolm anxiously.

"Naw!" drawled his voice jerkily, for the road hereabouts was full of holes, and even speech was as impossible as even riding. "Naw," he said. "I nearly lost my hat."

He spoke only once again that night, except to refuse the offer to ride inside the car. He preferred the footboard, he said, and explained that as a youth it had been his ambition to be a fireman.

"I wonder," he said suddenly, breaking the silence of nearly an hour.

"What do you wonder?" asked Malinkoff, who sat nearest to the window, where Cherry stood.

"I wonder what happened to that boy on the bicycle?"

CHAPTER XVII

ON THE ROAD

Israel Kensky died at five o'clock in the morning. They had made a rough attempt to dress the wound in his shoulder, but, had they been the most skilful of surgeons with the best appliances which modern surgery had invented at their hands, they could not have saved his life. He died literally in the arms of Irene, and they buried him in a little forest on the edge of a sluggish stream, and Cherry Bim unconsciously delivered the funeral oration.

"This poor old guy was a good fellow," he said. "I ain't got nothing on the Jews as a class, except their habit of prosperity, and that just gets the goat of people like me, who hate working for a living. He was straight and white, and that's all you can expect any man to be, or any woman either, with due respect to you, miss. If any of you gents would care to utter a few words of prayer, you'll get a patient hearing from me, because I am naturally a broad-minded man."

It was the girl who knelt by the grave, the tears streaming down her cheeks, but what she said none heard. Cherry Bim, holding his hat crown outward across his breast, produced the kind of face which he thought adequate to the occasion; and, after the party had left the spot, he stayed behind. He rejoined them after a few minutes, and he was putting away his pocket-knife as he ran.

"Sorry to keep you, ladies and gents," he said, "but I am a sentimental man in certain matters. I always have been and always shall be."

"What were you doing?" asked Malcolm, as the car bumped along.

Cherry Bim cleared his throat and seemed embarrassed.

"Well, to tell you the truth," he said. "I made a little cross and stuck it over his head."

"But–" began Malcolm, and the girl's hand closed his mouth.

"Thank you, Mr. Bim," she said. "It was very, very kind of you."

"Nothing wrong, I hope?" asked Cherry in alarm.

"Nothing wrong at all," said the girl gently.