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

small chapel, sited in one corner of the walled enclosure. The windows of the chapel were high up, but Malcolm thought he detected a faint glow of light in the interior, and it was this flicker which guided them to the chapel. The door was half open, and Malinkoff walked boldly in. The building, though small, was beautiful. Green malachite columns held up the groined roof, and the walls were white with the deadly whiteness of alabaster. A tiny altar, on which burnt the conventional three candles, fronted them as they entered, and the screen glittered with gold. A priest knelt before the altar, singing in a thin, cracked voice, so unmusically that the girl winced. Save for the priest and the party, the building was empty.

He rose at the sound of their footsteps, and stood waiting their approach. He was a young and singularly ugly man, and suspicion and fear were written plainly on his face.

"God save you, little brother of saints!" said Malinkoff.

"God save you, my son!" replied the priest mechanically. "What is it you want?"

"We need food and rest for this little lady, also hot coffee, and we will pay well."

Malinkoff knew that this latter argument was necessary. The priest shook his head.

"All the brethren have gone away from the monastery except Father Joachim, who is a timid man, Father Nicholas and myself," he said. "We have very little food and none to spare. They have eaten everything we had, and have killed my pretty chickens."

He did not say who "they" were, and Malinkoff was not sufficiently curious to inquire. He knew that the priests were no longer the power in the land that they were in the old days, and that there had been innumerable cases where the villagers had risen and slaughtered the men whose words hitherto had been as a law to them. A third of the monasteries in the Moscow Government had been sacked and burnt, and their congregations and officers dispersed.

He was surprised to find this beautiful chapel still intact, but he had not failed to notice the absence of the sacred vessels which usually adorned the altar, even in the midnight celebration.

"But can you do nothing for our little mama?" asked Malinkoff.

The priest shook his head.

"Our guests have taken everything," he said. "They have even turned Brother Joachim from the refectory."

"Your guests?" said Malinkoff.

The priest nodded.

"It is a great prince," he said in awe. "Terrible things are happening in the world, Antichrist is abroad, but we know little of such things in the monastery. The peasants have been naughty and have broken down our wall, slain our martyred brother Mathias--we could not find his body," he added quickly, "and Brother Joachim thinks that the Jews have eaten him so that by the consecrated holiness of his flesh they might avert their eternal damnation."

"Who is your prince?" asked Malcolm, hope springing in his breast.

There were still powerful factions in Russia which were grouped about the representatives and relatives of the late reigning house.

"I do not know his name," said the priest, "but I will lead you to him. Perhaps he has food."

He extinguished two of the candles on the altar, crossing himself all the while he was performing this ceremony, then led them through the screen and out at the back of the chapel. Malcolm thought he saw a face peering round the door as they approached it, and the shadow of a flying form crossing the dark yard. Possibly the timid Father Joachim he thought. Running along the wall was a low-roofed building.

"We are a simple order," said the priest, "and we live simply."

He had taken a candle lantern before he left the chapel, and this he held up to give them a better view. Narrow half-doors, the tops being absent, were set in the face of the building at intervals.

"Look!" he said, and pushed the lamp into the black void.

"A stable?" said Malinkoff.

He might have added: "a particularly draughty and unpleasant stable." There were straw-filled mangers and straw littered the floor.

"Do you keep many horses?"

The priest shook his head.

"Here we sleep," he said, "as directed in a vision granted to our most blessed saint and founder, St. Basil the Leper. For to him came an angel in the night, saying these words: 'Why sleepest thou in a fine bed when our Lord slept lowly in a stable?'"

He led the way across the yard to a larger building.

"His lordship may not wish to be disturbed, and if he is asleep I will not wake him."

"How long has he been here?" asked Malcolm.

"Since morning," repeated the other.

They were in a stone hall, and the priest hesitated. Then he opened the door cautiously, and peeped in. The room was well illuminated; they could see the hanging kerosene lamps from where they stood.

"Come," said the priest's voice in a whisper, "he is awake."

Malcolm went first. The room, though bare, looked bright and warm; a big wood fire blazed in an open hearth, and before it stood a man dressed in a long blue military coat, his hands thrust into his pockets. The hood of the coat was drawn over his head, and his attitude was one of contemplation. Malcolm approached him.

"Excellenz," he began, "we are travellers who desire----"

Slowly the man turned.

"Oh, you 'desire'!" he bellowed. "What do you desire, Comrade Hay? I will tell you what _I_ desire--my beautiful little lamb, my pretty little wife!"

It was Boolba.


CHAPTER XIX

THE END OF BOOLBA


Cherry Bim, the last of the party to enter the room, made a dash for the door, and came face to face with the levelled rifle held in the hands of a soldier who had evidently been waiting the summons of Boolba's shout. Behind him were three other men. Cherry dropped to the ground as the man's rifle went off, shooting as he fell, and the man tumbled down. Scrambling to his feet, he burst through the doorway like a human cannon ball, but not even his nimble guns could save him this time. The hall was full of soldiers, and they bore him down by sheer weight.

They dragged him into the refectory, bleeding, and the diversion at any rate had had one good effect. Only Boolba was there, roaring and raging, groping a swift way round the walls, one hand searching, the other guiding.

"Where are they?" he bellowed. "Come to me, my little beauty. Hay! I will burn alive. Where are they?"

"Little Commissary," said the leader of the soldiers, "she is not here. They did not pass out."

"Search, search!" shouted Boolba, striking at the man. "Search, you pig!"

"We have the other boorjoo," stammered the man.

"Search!" yelled Boolba. "There is a door near the fire--is it open?"

The door lay in the shadow, and the man ran to look.

"It is open, comrade," he said.

"After them, after them!"

Boolba howled the words, and in terror they left their prisoner and flocked out of the door. Cherry stood in the centre of the room, his hands strapped behind his back, his shirt half ripped from his body, and looked up into the big blinded face which came peering towards him as though, by an effort of will, it could glimpse his enemy.

"You are there?"

Boolba's hands passed lightly over the gun-man's face, fell upon his shoulders, slipped down the arm.

"Is this the thief? Yes, yes; this is the thief. What is he doing?"

He turned, not knowing that the soldiers had left him alone, and again his hands passed lightly over Cherry's face.

"This is good," he said, as he felt the bands on the wrists. "To-morrow, little brother, you will be dead."

He might have spared himself his exercise and his reproaches, because to Cherry Bim's untutored ear his reviling was a mere jabber of meaningless words. Cherry was looking round to find something sharp enough on which to cut the strap which bound him, but there was nothing that looked like a knife in the room. He knew he had a minute, and probably less, to make his escape. His eyes rested for a moment on the holster at Boolba's belt, and he side-stepped.

"Where are you going?"

Boolba's heavy hand rested on his shoulder.

"Not out of the doorway, my little pigeon. I am blind, but----"

So far he had got when Cherry turned in a flash, so that his back was toward Boolba. He stooped, and made a sudden dash backward, colliding with the Commissary, and in that second his hand had gripped the gun at Boolba's waist. There was a strap across the butt, but it broke with a jerk.

Then followed a duel without parallel. Boolba pulled his second gun and fired, and, shooting as blindly, Cherry fired backward. He heard a groan over his shoulder and saw Boolba fall to his knees. Then he ran for the main door, stumbled past the state-bedroom of the monks, and into the chapel. It was his one chance that the priest had returned to his devotions, and he found the man on his knees.

"Percy," said Cherry, "unfasten that strap."

The priest understood no language but his own. But a gesture, the strap about the wrists, blue and swollen, and the long revolver, needed no explanation. The strap fell off and Cherry rubbed his wrists.

He opened the breech of his gun; he had four shells left, but he was alone against at least twenty men. He guessed that Boolba had made the monastery his advance headquarters whilst he was waiting for news of the fugitives, and probably not twenty but two hundred were within call.

He reached the road and made for the place where the car had been left. If the others had escaped they also would go in that direction. He saw no guard or sentry, and heard no sound from the walled enclosure of the monastery. He struck against something in the roadway and stooped and picked it up. It was stitched in a canvas cover and it felt like a book. He suddenly remembered the scraps of conversation he had overheard between the girl and Malcolm.

This, then, was the "Book of All-Power."

"Foolishness," said Cherry, and put it in his pocket. But the book showed one thing clearly--the others had got away. He had marked the place where they had stopped, but the car was gone!

It was too dark to see the tracks, but there was no question that it had been here, for he found an empty petrol tin and the still air reeked of rubber solution.

He had need of all his philosophy. He was in an unknown country, a fugitive from justice, and that country was teeming with soldiers. Every road was watched, and he had four cartridges between him and capture. There was only one thing to do, and that was to go back the way the car had come, and he stepped out undauntedly, halting now and again to stoop and look along the railway line, for he was enough of an old campaigner to know how to secure a skyline.

Then in the distance he saw a regular line of lights, and those lights were moving. It was a railway train, and apparently it was turning a curve, for one by one the lights disappeared and only