Red Stefan (27 page)

Trampling feet in the hall. Trampling feet, and the rush of voices. It was like the sudden breaking of a storm.

He had taken but a couple of running steps towards the hearth, when the beam of a powerful electric torch struck him full in the face. In an instant the room seemed full of people. His hand went to his revolver and dropped again. Too many of them. He had bluffed his way out of tighter places than this.… If he were shot, what would happen to Elizabeth?

He slipped Fay's ring on to the top joint of his little finger and called out in a surprised voice,

“What is it, comrades?”

Over his head he heard the click of the closing panel.

CHAPTER XXIX

The panel closed without any sound except that one faint click. On the inner side of it Elizabeth stood in an agony of fear and doubt. She had closed the panel. But had she closed it to save Stephen, or to save herself? She had ached a hundred times with the knowledge that it was she who was his greatest danger, but was it that knowledge which had made her hand go out and pull the panel to? Was it?
Was it?
Or was it just the coward's instinct to save herself? She didn't know. She stood in the dark with Fay Darenska's pearls lying over her heart as heavy as tears, and she did not know.

She had the rings he had given her to hold in her left hand. It was her right hand with the blown-out candle in it which had snatched at the panel and pulled it to. The candle had fallen—somewhere—here at her feet. But it didn't matter, for a candle was no good if you hadn't any matches. Stephen had the matches.

Stephen
—

She had been shut in with her half stunned thoughts, but at his name she came back to the outer sense of things. She felt the sharp cutting edge of the big diamond where her hand was clenched over Fay Darenska's rings, and she could hear the voices in the room beyond. She could hear them quite clearly—a lot of angry men, a torrent of excited words. And then Stephen, quite cheerful and at his ease:

“But I'm not Nikolai.”

“Here you—schoolmaster—Glinka—isn't he Nikolai?”

So it was Glinka who was here.… A feeling of passionate rage swept over Elizabeth. She became less afraid. Her thoughts moved quickly. She had done the right thing when she shut the panel, because if the secret way had been discovered, there would have been no hope at all. Her mind cleared. If she had been taken with Stephen, she couldn't have done anything to help him, but as long as one of them was free there was hope.

She heard Stephen say, “I'm Nikolai's brother Mikhail. Everyone in the village knows me. What have you got against Nikolai anyhow?”

“Nikolai this—Nikolai that! We don't believe in your Nikolai!”

Then Stephen again:

“But everyone knows us here, I tell you.”

She heard Glinka break in angrily.

“Where's the woman you were passing off as your sister? If you're not Nikolai, where is he, and where's the woman? We followed the track of their sledge, I tell you, and it brought us straight here. What are you doing here if you're not Nikolai?”

Out in the room Stephen shrugged his shoulders. There was a Red Guard on either side of him. Two more confronted him, with Glinka between them. The man with the torch had turned it out. Now that the shutter had fallen, there was enough pale wintry daylight to serve. Facing Stephen, Glinka faced the light. It showed the uncertainty in his eyes. He was not sure that this was the man whom he had seen in Ilya's hut. This man seemed younger. His hair was short, he was less swarthy. His voice was different—a higher, younger voice. A man can cut his hair and change his voice.… But then where was the woman?… He wasn't sure.

His uncertainty made an atmosphere of which Stephen was intensely aware. He said with half a laugh,

“What am I doing here? No harm. I camp here sometimes when I'm passing through. There are fewer fleas than there are in the village, and I've a tender skin.” He pointed to the hearth. “There's one of my fires if you don't believe me.”

A half burnt log lay across the cold ash. Everybody stared at it. Then they all looked back at Stephen.

“If Nikolai is your brother, where is he?” said Glinka angrily. “He had a woman with him, and I say that he is a
bourzhui
and a counter-revolutionary who has been going by the name of Red Stefan, and that the woman is an English
bourzhui
called Elizabeth Radin whom he has helped to escape from prison, assaulting the Commissar Petroff and carrying her off. A description of these two people has been broadcast, and I immediately suspected that the woman with Nikolai was disguised. She would not speak or give an account of herself, and when I spoke to her she trembled.”

“Fancy that!” said Stephen. He winked at the Red Guards. “She didn't know her luck—did she? Anyone can tell he's a schoolmaster. I wish I could talk like that.”

One of the men laughed, and Glinka spat with rage.

“Where's Nikolai?” he shouted. “Where's the woman? Where's the sledge? I tell you we traced it here!”

Stephen changed his expression. The laughter went out of his face and a deep melancholy took its place.

“The sledge is in the village. As for Nikolai and my sister, the wolves got them.”

The men looked at one another. It was true that the sledge had been chased by wolves. The tracks showed that.

Glinka gave a furious, scornful laugh.

“And the horse brought the sledge here and told you what had happened, I suppose!”

Stephen gazed at him sadly.

“No, no, no, Comrade Schoolmaster. Grischa is clever, but he cannot talk. I will tell you how it all happened. May I do that, sergeant?”

The sergeant at Glinka's right gave a brief nod. Like the other Red Guards he wore a long, heavy military overcoat and a peaked cap with a red star in front.

“Say anything you like,” he said, “but if you tell lies, it will be the worse for you.”

“Oh, I shan't tell lies,” said Stephen. “Never waste a good lie when the truth will do just as well—eh, Comrade? Besides, if you've been over the track you'll know whether I'm speaking the truth or not. Well, this is just what happened. Nikolai got a message to go to Moscow and fetch away our sister Anna because her husband was dead and she's always been a poor thing who couldn't shift for herself, so we thought we ought to look after her, and Nikolai went off to Moscow. He took the horse and sledge as far as Orli, and he dropped me at the old forester's hut. If you tracked the sledge, I expect you came on it.”

“What were you doing there?” said Glinka.

Stephen winked at the Red Guard who had laughed.

“Shall I be put in prison if I say I was snaring hares? Mind you, I don't say that that was what I was doing, but I might have been.”

“Go on,” said the sergeant.

“Well, there I was anyhow, and you needn't worry about what I was doing. Then a couple of nights ago, just as I was beginning to wonder where Nikolai was, he came driving hell-for-leather across the clearing with the wolves after him. I heard him shout, and I ran out with my rifle. Between us we managed to get the horse clear and the three of us into the hut.”

“The three of you?” said the sergeant.

Stephen flung out his hands.

“The three of us—Nikolai, and Grischa, and myself.”

“Where was the woman?” shouted Glinka.

Stephen looked down at the dusty floor.

“When I asked him that, he didn't answer me. I said, ‘Where's Anna?' and he didn't answer me. I said ‘Didn't she come with you?'”

He had them all spell-bound, waiting for the answer. When he had kept them for a tense half minute, he went on, his voice low and shaken.

“Nikolai said, ‘Yes—she came.' Then I said, ‘Where is she?' and he said, ‘The wolves got her.'”

Even Glinka shrank back a little. There was a pause. Then one of the men said,

“He threw her out?”

“I didn't ask him,” said Stephen very low. He brushed his hand quickly across his eyes. “I gave him some food. Presently we slept. I don't know how long it was. I woke up because the door banged. Nikolai was gone. I looked out and I could see him running over the snow. I called to him, but he went on running. The moon was very bright—I saw the wolves on his trail. I shut the door again. What could I do? He had gone mad—I couldn't save him. In the morning I took the horse and sledge and came here.”

The guards exchanged glances. Such things had been known to happen. The story tallied with the tracks in the snow.

“And what brought you here?” said the sergeant. Then, in an altered voice, “Here, let's have a look at your hands.”

Stephen held them out—broken nails, earth-grimed fingers, the incongruous glint of Fay's wedding ring.

“You've been digging,” said the sergeant. “What's that ring on your finger? What have you been up to? You'd better own up.”

Stephen made a shrinking movement.

“Digging?” he stammered.

The sergeant came up to him with a menacing expression.

“Here, turn round to the light and let's have a look at you!” He took him by the shoulders and swung him round to face the gaping window. “Digging?” he said, and looked at the hand which had touched Stephen's gritty blouse. “Well, I should just about say you
had
been digging! Look at your clothes! Come, come—what have you been up to?”

Stephen looked down at his dirty hands.

“I got wood and made a fire,” he said.

“That cock won't fight,” said the sergeant. “What's the good of telling lies? If you're this Red Stefan we're looking for, your number's up anyhow, because we've got someone down at the village who can identify you—come all the way from Tronsk on purpose. If you're what you say you are, of course that needn't worry you, and we can have a talk about this digging business.” His eyes were on the glint of the ring.

Stephen hung his head in apparent confusion. Up and down all over Russia there were stories of treasure buried or hidden. Such treasure certainly belonged to the State. But there was a gleam in the sergeant's eye. Even Glinka listened instead of talking. Treasure is sticky stuff to handle. With any chance of handling it, they would not be in a hurry to remove him to the village.

“Tie him up!” said the sergeant. “I can see he's a slippery fellow. Just his hands—he'll want his feet to walk with presently. And you two get that shutter up to the window and light the fire! We needn't freeze whilst we're waiting.”

Stephen held out his hands with a sheepish air. What a fool he had been to let himself be trapped like this! Someone from Tronsk to identify him.… Petroff? Good Lord—that was going to be awkward. He wondered if there was any odd chance that Petroff wouldn't recognize him. He rather welcomed the tying of his hands. If he was tied up, they might not keep so close a watch upon him. If he pitched a tale about a treasure, could he get some of them out of the room? That was what he wanted—to get them out of the room. Half a minute would do the trick. He measured the distance with his eye as he sat on the bench with a guard on either side of him. One stride to the hearth, a foot on the niche, another on the mantelshelf, and the panel shut between him and the room …

There were at least three people too many to make it possible. If he could get rid of Glinka, and the sergeant, and the guard who had laughed, he thought he could account for the two lads on the bench. As to his hands being tied, they were tied for just so long as he chose and no longer. It would take someone a great deal cleverer at the job than a Russian peasant to tie any knot that he couldn't get out of just when he wanted to. A useful accomplishment, and well worth the time he had given to acquiring it.

He looked down at Fay's ring and considered what sort of yarn he had better spin. He didn't want to be taken out of this room, that was the worst of it. Yes, that was the worst of it, because sooner or later it would be bound to occur to somebody that the ground was frozen hard, and that if he had been digging, he must have been digging underground.

He began to consider leading the whole party down into the cellars and trying to give them the slip there. Half a minute's start would be enough. The bother was that he didn't see his way to getting that half minute's start. There were a damned sight too many of them, and he simply couldn't risk being shot, because of Elizabeth.

“Thinking it over?” said the sergeant's voice. “If you know what's good for you, you'll own up.”

The shutter had been propped into position. Someone had produced a lantern and set it on the mantelpiece. The fire had begun to burn.

Stephen shrugged his shoulders. Beyond the sergeant he could see Glinka staring at him with an angry, puzzled frown. He could think of no story that would serve him. The situation smouldered, and might at any moment go up in flames. He thought he would strike a match and see what happened. He looked up with a grin.

“If you've got someone who knows this Red Stefan of yours, why don't you trot him out? If he's down at the village, why not get a move on and take me there? He'll soon say he never set eyes on me before in his life, and everyone else will be able to tell you all about me.” He laughed a little. “And I can tell you just what they'll say—‘A bit of a rapscallion, but nobody's enemy except his own. Never did an honest day's work in his life, but a good fellow all the same. Tells a good story and sings a good song, and gets a good welcome wherever he goes.' That's what they'll tell you, sergeant.”

“He wants to get you away from here,” said Glinka in an angry whisper.

“We're staying here,” said the sergeant.

Stephen looked impudently at Glinka.

“Schoolmasters know everything—don't they? What does it feel like to be so clever?”

“Where did you get that ring?” said the sergeant.