The Book of All-Power - Edgar Wallace (free ebook reader for iphone txt) 📗

a gentle irony, and yet for the while he could not distinguish how much of tragedy there was in the man's fun.

"But why are you----"

"Driving a cab?" The general finished the sentence. "Because, my friend, I am human. I must eat, for example; I must have a room to sleep in. I need cigarettes, and clean shirts at least three times a week--for God's sake never let that be known. I must also have warm clothes for the winter--in fact, I must live."

"But haven't you--money?" Malcolm felt all a decent man's embarrassment. "Forgive me butting into your affairs, but naturally I'm rather hazed."

"Naturally," laughed the general. "A bottle of kavass, my peach of Turkistan, and a glass for our comrade."

"Long live the Revolution!" wheezed the waitress mechanically.

"Long may it live, little mother!" responded the general.

When the girl had gone he squared round to his companion.

"I have no shame, Mr. Hay--I'm going to let you pay for your own dinner because I cannot in these democratic times pauperize you by paying for you. No, I have no money. My balance in the State bank has been confiscated to the sacred cause of the people. My estate, a hundred versts or so from Moscow, confiscated to the sacred cause of the Revolution, my house in Petrograd is commandeered to the sacred service of the Soviet."

"But your command?"

The general did not smile now. He laid down his knife and fork and threw a glance behind him.

"The men began shooting their officers in March, 1917," he said, lowering his voice. "They executed the divisional staff in May--the democratic spirit was of slow growth. They spared me because I had written a book in my youth urging popular government and had been confined in the fortess of Vilna for my crime. When the army was disbanded I came to Moscow, and the cab was given to me by a former groom of mine, one Isaac Mosservitch, who is now a judge of the high court and dispenses pretty good law, though he cannot sign his own name."

"Mr. Hay," he went on earnestly, "you did wrong to come to Moscow. Get back to Kieff and strike down into the Caucasus. You can reach the American posts outside of Tiflis. You'll never leave Russia. The Bolsheviks have gone mad--blood-mad, murder-mad. Every foreigner is suspect. The Americans and the English are being arrested. I can get you a passport that will carry you to Odessa, and you can reach Batoum, and Baku from there."

Malcolm leant back in his chair and looked thoughtfully at the other.

"Is it so bad?"

"Bad! Moscow is a mad-house. Listen--do you hear anything?"

Above the hum of conversation Malcolm caught a sound like the cracking of whips.

"Rifle-firing," said the general calmly. "There's a counter-revolution in progress. The advanced Anarchists are in revolt against the Bolsheviks. There is a counter-revolution every morning. We cab-drivers meet after breakfast each day and decide amongst ourselves which of the streets shall be avoided. We are pretty well informed--Prince Dalgoursky, who was a captain in the Preopojensky Guard, sells newspapers outside the Soviet headquarters, and the comrades give him tips. One of these days the comrades will shoot him, but for the moment he is in favour, and makes as much as a hundred roubles a day."

The waitress came to the table, and the conversation momentarily ceased. When she had gone Malcolm put the question which he had asked so often in the past four years.

"Can you give me any news of the Grand Duke Yaroslav?"

The other shook his head.

"His Highness was in Petrograd when I heard of him last."

"And--and his daughter? She has been with the Russian Red Cross on the Riga front, I know."

The bearded man shot a queer glance at his companion.

"In what circumstances did you see her last?" he asked.

Malcolm hesitated.

He could hardly tell a stranger of that tragic scene which was enacted in his bedroom. From the moment she had fled through the door he had not set eyes upon her. In the morning when he had wakened, feeling sick and ill, he had been told that the Grand Duke and his daughter had left by the early northern express for the capital. Of Boolba, that hideously blinded figure, he heard nothing. When he inquired for Israel Kensky, men shrugged and said that he had "disappeared." His house was closed and the old man might be in prison or in hiding. Later he was to learn that Kensky had reappeared in Moscow, apparently without hindrance from the authorities. As for Boolba, he had kept his counsel.

"You seem embarrassed," smiled Malinkoff. "I will tell you why I ask. You know that her Grand Ducal Highness was banished from Court for disobedience to the royal will?"

Malcolm shook his head.

"I know nothing--absolutely nothing. Kieff and Odessa are full of refugees and rumours, but one is as much a suspect as the other."

"She would not marry--that is all. I forget the name of the exalted personage who was chosen for her, though I once helped to carry him up to bed--he drank heavily even in those days. God rest him! He died like a man. They hung him in a sack in Peter and Paul, and he insulted the Soviets to the last!"

"So--so she is not married?"

The general was silent, beckoning the waitress.

"My little dear," he said, "what shall I pay you?"

She gave him the scores and they settled.

"Which way now?" asked the general.

"I hardly know--what must a stranger do before he takes up his abode?"

"First find an abode," said the general with a meaning smile. "You asked me to drive you to the Hotel Bazar Slav, my simple but misguided friend! That is a Soviet headquarters. You will certainly go to a place adjacent to the hotel to register yourself, and afterwards to the Commissary to register all over again, and, if you are regarded with approval, which is hardly likely, you will be given a ticket which will enable you to secure the necessities of life--the tickets are easier to get than the food."

The first call at the house near the Bazar Slav gave them neither trouble nor results. The Soviet headquarters was mainly concerned with purely administrative affairs, and the organization of its membership. Its corridors and doorway were crowded with soldiers wearing the familiar red armlet, and when Malinkoff secured an interview with a weary looking and unkempt official, who sat collarless in his shirt sleeves at a table covered with papers, that gentleman could do no more than lean back in his chair and curse the interrupters volubly.

"We might have dispensed with the headquarters visit," said Malinkoff, "but it is absolutely necessary that you should see the Commissary unless you want to be pulled out of your bed one night and shot before you're thoroughly awake. By the way, we have an interesting American in gaol--by his description I gather he is what you would call a gun-man."

Malcolm stared.

"Here--a gun-man?"

Malinkoff nodded.

"He held up the Treasurer-General of the Soviet and relieved him of his wealth. I would like to have met him--but I presume he is dead. Justice is swift in Moscow, especially for those who hold up the officials of the Revolution."

"What sort of justice do these people administer?" asked Malcolm curiously.

Malinkoff shrugged his padded shoulders.

"Sometimes I think that the very habit of justice is dead in this land," he said. "On the whole they are about as just and fair as was the old regime--that is not saying much, is it? The cruelty of our rule to-day is due rather to ignorance than to ill will. A few of the men higher up are working off their old grievances and are profiting enormously, but the rank and file of the movement are labouring for the millennium."

"I think they're mad," said Malcolm.

"All injustice is mad," replied Malinkoff philosophically. "Now get into my little cab, and I will drive you to the Commissary."

The Commissary occupied a large house near the Igerian Gate. It was a house of such noble proportions that at first Malcolm thought it was one of the old public offices, and when Malinkoff had drawn up at the gate he put the question.

"That is the house of the Grand Duke Yaroslav," said Malinkoff quietly. "I think you were inquiring about him a little earlier in the day."

The name brought a little pang to Malcolm's heart, and he asked no further questions. There was a sentry on the _podyasde_--an untidy, unshaven man, smoking a cigarette--and a group of soldiers filled the entrance, evidently the remainder of the guard.

The Commissary was out. When would he be back? Only God knew. He had taken "the Little Mother" for a drive in the country, or perhaps he had gone to Petrograd--who knew? There was nobody to see but the Commissary--on this fact they insisted with such vehemence that Malcolm gathered that whoever the gentleman was, he brooked no rivals and allowed no possible supplanter to stand near his throne.

They came back at four o'clock in the afternoon, but the Commissary was still out. It was nine o'clock, after five inquiries, that the sentry replied "Yes" to the inevitable question.

"Now you will see him," said Malinkoff, "and the future depends upon the potency of your favourite patron saint."

Malcolm stopped in the doorway.

"General----" he said.

"Not that word," said Malinkoff quickly. "Citizen or comrade--comrade for preference."

"I feel that I am leading you into danger--I have been horribly selfish and thoughtless. Will it make any difference to you, your seeing him?"

Malinkoff shook his head.

"You're quite right, it is always dangerous to attract the attention of the Committee for Combatting the Counter-Revolution," he said, "but since I have taken you in hand I might as well see him as stay outside on my cab, because he is certain to inquire who brought you here, and it might look suspicious if I did not come in with you. Besides, somebody will have to vouch for you as a good comrade and friend of the Soviet."

He was half in earnest and half joking, but wholly fatalistic.

As they went up the broad spiral staircase which led to the main floor of the Yaroslav Palace, Malcolm had qualms. He heartily cursed himself for bringing this man into danger. So far as he was concerned, as he told himself, there was no risk at all, because he was a British traveller, having no feeling one way or the other toward the Soviet Government. But Malinkoff would be a marked man, under suspicion all the time. Before the office of the Commissary was a sentry without rifle. He sat at a table which completely blocked the doorway, except for about eight inches at one side. He inquired the business of the visitors, took their names and handed them to a soldier, and with a sideways jerk of his head invited them to squeeze past him into the bureau.


CHAPTER XI

THE COMMISSARY WITH THE CROOKED NOSE


There were a dozen men in the room in stained military overcoats and red armlets. One, evidently an officer, who carried a black portfolio under his arm, was leaning against the panelled wall, smoking and snapping his fingers to a dingy white terrier that leapt to his repeated invitations.

At the table,