He jumped down to the platform and disappeared amidst the throng. The
soldiers remained in the compartment, talking among themselves and getting
into conversation with the two Khalinsk guards. One of the latter talked
rather indiscreetly but A.J. did not think it wise to interfere.
After a few moments the little Jew returned, accompanied by another
obvious Jew, taller and rather fine-looking. Without preamble he addressed
himself to A.J.
“You are the Assistant-Commissar at Khalinsk?”
“Yes.”
“And this woman was formerly the Countess Marie Alexandra
Adraxine?”
“Yes.”
“Then we cannot permit you to pass—either of you. In fact, you
are both arrested.”
A.J. argued with sudden and rather startling vehemence: the central
government wanted this woman; she was to supply evidence which would be
wanted at a full-dress trial of all the counter-revolutionary ringleaders;
there would be a tremendous row if some local Soviet were to interfere with
such intentions. A.J. ended by an astute appeal to the men
personally—“You two are doubtless ambitious—you would
perhaps like to see yourselves in higher positions than a local Soviet? Do
you think it will help you to countermand the orders of the central
government? Whereas if, on the other hand—” It was pretty bluff,
but he played it well, and the two Jews were reluctantly impressed. At last
the man called Patroslav said something to his colleague in a language A.J.
did not understand, and a lively and evidently acrimonious argument developed
between them. Then Patroslav swung round on his heel and went off. The other
Jew turned to A.J. “You are to be allowed to proceed with your
prisoner,” he announced, with sullen insolence. “But your guards
must return to Khalinsk—we will replace them by two others. And your
prisoner will travel in a third-class compartment with the guards—we do
not allow privileges of any kind to enemies of the Revolution. You yourself,
being a government official, may remain here.”
“On the contrary, I shall go wherever the prisoner goes, since I am
still in charge and responsible.”
“As you prefer.”
It was all, A.J. perceived, a scheme of petty annoyance, and on the whole
he was glad to be escaping from Ekaterinburg with nothing worse. During the
whole of the delay the woman had not spoken a word, but as they walked down
the platform to change their compartment she said: “I am sorry,
Commissar, to be inconveniencing you so much. If I give my parole not to
escape, would you not prefer to stay in comfort where you were?”
“There is little difference in comfort between one place and
another,” he answered.
But there was, for the third-class coaches were filthy and verminous, and
there was neither time nor opportunity to make even the most perfunctory
turnout.
The night had a brilliant moon, and the hills, seen through the windows of
the train, upreared like heaving seas of silver. There was no light in the
compartment save that of a candle-stump fixed in the neck of a bottle. The
heavy bearded faces of the guards shone fiercely in the flickering light.
They were Ukrainians and sometimes exchanged a few husky words in their local
dialect. A.J. had a slight understanding of this, but the men talked so
quietly that he could not catch more than a few words here and there.
Suddenly the train came to a jangling standstill, and after some delay a
train official walked along the track with the information that a bridge had
been blown up just ahead and that all passengers must walk on several miles
to the next station, where another train would be waiting. A.J., his
prisoner, and the two guards, climbed down to the track, which ran in a wide
curve through densely wooded country. One of the guards declared that he knew
the spot quite well, and that there was an easy short-cut to the station
across country. A.J. doubtfully agreed and they set off along a wide pathway
that met the railway at a tangent. They all walked in silence for a few
minutes, with the voices of the other passengers still within hearing; but
soon they were amongst tall pine- trees, and A.J. imagined, though he could
not be certain, that the path was veering too far to the north. He said to
the guards: “Are you quite sure that this is the way?”—and
one of them answered: “Oh yes—you can hear the engine-whistle in
the distance.” A.J. listened and could certainly hear it, but it
sounded very remote.
They all walked on a little further, with the two guards chattering softly
together in Ukrainian. A.J.’s acute sense of direction again warned
him, and a somewhat similar feeling of apprehension must have seized on his
prisoner, for she said “Don’t you think we should have done
better to keep to the railway line?”
At last even the guards seemed to be undecided; they had been walking a
little ahead and now stopped and began arguing together in excited
undertones.
“
Don’t
you think it would have been better?” she
repeated.
“Possibly,” he answered, in a whisper. “It was certainly
foolish to let them lead us into this forest.”
“You think they have lost the way?”
“Maybe—or maybe not.”
“Ah,” she answered. “So you too are
wondering?”
“Wondering what?”
“What they are chatting about so quietly.”
He said quickly: “I have a revolver. I am keeping a look-
out.”
He was, in fact, beginning not to like the appearance of things at all.
Had the two guards led them deliberately astray, and if so, with what
intention? In the train he had heard them chattering together, but they could
hardly have been plotting this particular piece of strategy since the
blown-up railway bridge could not have been foreseen. Perhaps, however, the
idea had come to one of them as a quick impromptu, a variant upon some less
immediate scheme that they had had in mind.
One of the guards approached him with a measured deliberation which, in
the moonlight, seemed peculiarly sinister. “If you will both wait here
with me,” he began, “my friend says he will find out where we are
and will come back to tell us.”
At first it seemed an innocent and reasonable suggestion, involving the
somewhat lessened danger of being left alone with one possible enemy instead
of two. But then A.J. recollected an ancient ruse that bandits sometimes
played on their victims in Siberian forests; they said they were going away,
but they did not really do so; they crept back and sprang on their enemies
from behind. “No,” he answered, with sudden decision. “It
doesn’t matter—we’ll go back to where we began and then
walk along the track. I think I can remember the way.”
He began to walk in the reverse direction with the woman at his side and
the two guards following him at a little distance. They seemed rather
disconcerted by his decision, and continued to exchange remarks in
whispers.
After a few moments A.J. said quietly to his companion: “I want you
to be on your guard. I don’t trust those fellows.”
“Neither do I. What do you think their game is?”
“Robbery. Perhaps murder. This going back to the railway has upset
their plans—I can gather that from the way they’re
talking.”
“What can we do?”
“Nothing—except keep our heads. Have you good
nerve?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“Then take this revolver and use it if necessary, but not
otherwise.” He handed it to her quickly as they passed into the shadow
of dark trees.
For the next few moments there came no sound except the crunch of four
pairs of footsteps over the fir-cones. Neither A.J. nor the woman spoke, and
the two guards also had ceased their whispered conversation.
A.J.’s eyes were searching ahead for any sign of the railway as well
as preparing for any lightning emergency in the rear. The silence and
darkness of the forest were both uncanny, and though he listened acutely for
any repetition of that distant engine-whistle, he heard nothing. After
walking for some ten minutes, by which time he estimated that the railway
ought to have come into view, the track narrowed and began to twist uphill.
He whispered suddenly: “I’ve lost my way.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means we may have to spend the rest of the night in the forest
with these ruffians.” A moment later he added: “They’re
talking again—they’re guessing we’re lost, and I’m
afraid it suits them only too well. I think I’d rather have it out with
them than go on like this.”
He stopped abruptly, facing the guards so quickly that they had not time
to conceal the revolvers in their hands. “Gentlemen,” he said
calmly, “I think you must find it a burden to carry those weapons as
well as our luggage. Suppose you hand them over to me—I can guard the
party if we are attacked.”
The very unexpectedness of the request might have succeeded with one of
the men, had not the other, with a snarl of rage, flung himself all at once
upon A.J. The other then went to his companion’s assistance, and the
three men were soon engaged in a desperate struggle in which darkness seemed
an extra enemy of them all. One powerful pair of arms gripped A.J. round the
neck, while another seized his right arm and sought to wrest away the
revolver. Both assailants were exceedingly strong, and though A.J. was strong
also, he could not have held out for long against such odds. Suddenly one of
the guards managed to wrench his own revolver free and aimed it full in
A.J.’s face; and simultaneously a second revolver swung on to the scene
and glinted in a shaft of moonlight. The two triggers were pressed almost
together, but there was only one report. The guard’s weapon misfired,
and a second later its owner collapsed to the ground. A.J. turned to deal
with the second guard, but with a sharp movement the latter drew back and
plunged wildly into the undergrowth and away.
A.J. was left, revolver in hand, peering down at a huddled body. The woman
stood close to him, also holding a weapon, but hers was smoking.
He stooped and said, after a pause: “He’s dead.”
“Is he? I did it.”
“Probably saving your own life as well as mine.”
“Yes, I daresay. But what has to be done now?”
“This—before anything else.”
He dragged the body to one side of the path and pushed it into the midst
of thick undergrowth.
“Was the other fellow hurt?” she then asked.
“No—only terrified. He’ll soon find his way to the
nearest village and tell everybody. There’ll be a pretty big
fuss.”
“But we were being attacked—it was self-defence,
surely?”
“In a way, yes, but he’s hardly likely to say so, and
nobody’s likely to take our word for it against his. Probably
he’ll say we’re counter-revolutionary spies and that we seized
the chance of a train hold-up to lure our two guards into the forest and
attack them.”
“But you have your papers to prove who you are?”
“You saw for yourself how doubtfully they were accepted in
Ekaterinburg. After the stories that fellow will spread about us,
they’ll count even less.”
“Then it looks as if we’d better move on.”
“Yes. Instantly.”
“Do you know which way to go?”
“Away from the nearest village. That means, almost certainly,
uphill.”
Then they discovered that they were both quite breathless. All about them
were the dark pillars of tree-trunks, with here and there a delicate pattern
on the undergrowth where moonlight spilled through. He began to gather up the
various bundles that the two guards had thrown down. Then they hurried away.
They climbed in silence for some time, till at last she asked, in a very
ordinary casual voice, what he was thinking about. He answered: “To be
exact, about a packet of chocolate I left on the seat in the
train.”
She laughed softly. “Never mind. I have some. Shall we share
it?”
“Not yet. Better get on further.”
They went on climbing amongst the trees, stopping only now and then to
listen for any distant sound. But none could be heard distinctly, though
once, from the very edge of the world, it seemed, there came what might have
been the wail of a train-whistle. As they climbed higher, the trees thinned
out into the open, and suddenly they reached a high curving summit outlined
against the moonlight like a knife-edge. The air, after the cool forest
depths, was warm, and they themselves were again breathless. “Keep in
shadow,” he ordered, and they took a few backward steps into a little
hollow full of dead leaves. A squirrel scampered past them as they halted.
“Now for your chocolate,” he said.
They sat down on a leafy slope and shared the chocolate and also a hunk of
black bread that he had brought from Tarkarovsk. There was nothing to drink,
but he had a water-bottle and they could find a stream as soon as it grew
daylight. They ate ravenously and were still hungry when they had finished.
Then it was necessary to make plans, tentatively, at any rate, for the
future.
A.J. was not disposed to minimise the seriousness of the situation. The
story that the runaway guard would doubtless tell was just as credible as
theirs—perhaps more so to those he would be addressing. A man supposed
to be a Siberian assistant-commissar, supposed also to be escorting to Moscow
a dangerous female counter-revolutionary and member of the aristocracy; the
doubts that the Ekaterinburg officials had had, and their precautionary
escort of two Red guards; the shooting of one of these guards in the middle
of a forest—such a story would not seem difficult either to believe or
to interpret in a district notorious for its ‘redness.’ And as
for the wallet-full of assorted stamps and seals, A.J. began to feel that
their presence might be a danger quite as much as a safeguard.
If they could only make their way to another district, across country,
say, to the northern railway at Perm, they could there continue their journey
to Moscow incognito, as it were. A.J. was fairly sure that his story would be
credited at headquarters, especially as the Moscow authorities had had so
much trouble themselves with the turbulent Uralian provinces. Anyhow, all
that remained in the less immediate future; the more pressing problem was to
avoid detection by search-parties who might soon be scouring the forests.