The Celestial City E-Book

Baroness Emmuska Orczy

• Herausgeber: Phoemixx Classics Ebooks
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Seitenzahl: 407

Beschreibung

The Celestial City Baroness Emmuska Orczy - A beautiful young cat burglar is released from prison and flees her former life and criminal family for the Continent where she reinvents herself. Published in 1926 but in the rather lush prose of pre-war thrillers.

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Baroness Emmuska Orczy

The Celestial City

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BOOK I

PROLOGUE: LINKS IN THE CHAIN

I

It was very cold and very wet; a thin drizzle that was neither rain nor snow, but that partook of the unpleasant qualities of both, defied every overcoat and the stoutest of boots, penetrated to the marrow of every bone, and, incidentally, blurred the ugly outlines of the houses in Shaston Street as well as the tall, grim stone walls against which the man leaned in the intervals of tramping up and down to keep himself warm.

Now and again a passer-by spoke to him:

“Hello, Bill!”

And he, chawing the end of an excellent cigar, would murmur a surly “Hello!” in reply.

An excellent cigar and an expensive one, although he, the man, wore a coat over which age had thrown a greenish hue, trousers that had not seen a tailor’s goose for years, a woollen scarf that hid the absence of a collar, and a battered bowler that would have shamed a street musician.

He had been waiting here for over an hour, sometimes tramping up and down, sometimes leaning against the wall, ever since eight o’clock. She had let him know that it would be eight o’clock, but it was past nine now. The shops in Shaston Street were taking down their shutters, preparing for the business of the day. Through the frosty mist one or two lights blinked like lazy eyes just wakened from sleep.

Those that hailed the man as they passed did not stop to make conversation, though one of them did supplement the “Hello, Bill!” with a sympathetic query: “Been here long?” to which the man vouchsafed no reply. It was pretty obvious that he had been here long, for his coat, the one-time velvet collar of which was turned up to his ears, was covered all over with moisture that glistened in the grey morning light like myriads of minute strass.

It was nearly half-past nine before the big wooden doors swung open. The two bobbies at the gate did no more than glance up and hoist their massive chests by inserting their thumbs more firmly in their belts. From where the man stood he couldn’t see the gates, nor could he hear the heavy doors swinging on their well-oiled hinges, but some mysterious instinct warned him that they were now open and that she would come in a minute or two.

He threw away the stump of his cigar and turned back the collar of his coat. He even set his battered hat at a more jaunty angle, and finally passed his hand meditatively over his shaggy beard.

The next moment she came out, dressed as he had last seen her in that neat navy-blue coat and skirt, the thin stockings and patent shoes and the smart little hat that made her look just like a lady. She carried the small suit-case which he had given her the day she got engaged to Jim.

The two bobbies hardly looked at her. Silly fools! not often did they see such a pretty sight as she presented—even now.

Turning out of the gate, she stopped on the pavement and looked to right and left. Presently she saw the man through the mist and the rain and the cold, and, just for a second, her little face lit up. It had been so very sullen, so rebellious before; and, sure enough, the light faded out of it again in a moment, and left it frowning, with drooping mouth and lips set tightly together.

“Hello, kid!” the man said with a vague attempt at cheerfulness.

“Hello, father!” she gave answer, and then added with the ghost of a smile: “I did not know you with that beard.”

“No?” he rejoined simply.

Silently they walked on, side by side, leaving those awful walls towering behind them. Just as the girl stepped off the pavement before crossing Manthorpe Place, she turned and gave them a last look. An imperceptible shudder went through her slim body.

“Don’t look at ’em, kid,” the man said quietly. “It’s all over now, and we’ll forget all about ’em.”

She gave a dry little laugh:

“Easy for you,” she murmured, “to forget all about ’em.”

“We’ll go to London or somewhere,” the man went on with a vague gesture of his lean, brown hand. “There’s plenty of money now, you know. Quite safe.”

They didn’t speak for some time after that, just walked on, she carrying her suit-case, and he walking with his hands in the pockets of his overcoat, not offering to carry the case for her, though it was obviously heavy and awkward, but, nevertheless, very attentive and watchful over her at the crossings.

When they came to the bridge, she exclaimed:

“Hello! don’t we pay our penny to go over the bridge?”

“No!” the man replied; “they took off the toll last year. You didn’t know, did yer?”

“No,” she replied. “I didn’t know.”

“And you remember Reeson’s flour-mill? He’s had to shift his works, outside the city boundary. The smoke from his chimneys was rotting some of the stonework of the minster. He fought the corporation over it, tooth and nail. But he’s had to go. People say it’s cost him a mint of money, but my belief is that he got compensation and didn’t lose a penny by the transaction.”

He went on in the same strain for some time, but, obviously, the girl was not listening. Her thoughts were elsewhere, and he, equally obviously, was only talking for the sake of bridging over those awkward moments, the first they had spent alone together since goodness knows when. She had paused on the bridge and was gazing, silent and absorbed, on an old familiar picture: the grey, sluggish river, the city walls, the dull, red-brick buildings of St. Peter’s schools, half veiled in the drooping branches of secular willows; and farther on the towers of the minster, encased in a network of scaffolding, set up to protect them against the depredations of modern commercialism.

“Much about the same, ain’t it, kid?”

She turned away from the contemplation of the old city and replied with a sigh:

“Yes, much about the same.”

Five minutes later they were over the bridge, in the unfashionable quarter of Yeominster. Row upon row of pale, dim-coloured brickwork broken at regular intervals by flights of stone steps leading to the front doors and flanked by lines of painted iron railings, represented the contributions made by nineteenth-century architecture towards the aggrandisement of the mediæval city.

“Here we are,” the man said with an obvious sigh of relief as he came to a halt outside one of these ugly structures, and, taking the five stone steps at a bound, he fumbled for his latchkey and soon had the front door invitingly open. He entered the house, closely followed by the girl. When the door fell-to behind them, the narrow hall and passage were pitch dark; ahead the steep staircase, partly covered by a tattered oil-cloth, showed vaguely in the dim light that came slanting from a window above. From one of the upper floors came a confused sound made up of intermittent swearing, an occasional fretful appeal, some shuffling and banging, and the monotonous cry of a child.

“We haven’t been able to get rid of those people on the third floor yet,” the man remarked curtly. “Such a nuisance they are! Their brat is always sick.”

The girl followed him along the passage and down the stairs that led to the basement. From below, too, came a vague murmur of voices, and presently the man threw open a door. A loud “Hello!” uttered by half a dozen lusty throats greeted the arrival of the pair. The girl blinked her eyes, trying to pierce the haze of tobacco smoke that hung like a curtain between her and the number of hands stretched out to greet her. A chair was pushed forward for her.

She sat down, half-dazed by the heat of the atmosphere, the rough greetings, the familiar sounds and smells of the old place; a soft colour crept into her wan cheeks and a glimmer of excitement came into her eyes.

“Bless my soul,” said one man, “I do believe she’s grown.”

This made her laugh; she took off her hat with a quick gesture that had something of defiance in it, and her small head appeared with its crop of golden hair cut so close that for a moment she seemed in her neat tailor-made more like a boy than a girl. Her father gave a curt laugh.

“It’s all the fashion in London now,” he said, “for ladies to cut their hair. Ain’t it, mates?”

“It’ll soon grow,” someone remarked sententiously.

Further discussion on the subject was interrupted by the entrance of a very large, slatternly-looking woman carrying a tray of tea-things, which she set upon the table in the middle of the room. She showed neither surprise nor pleasure at seeing the girl, who gave her a curt “Hello, Mrs. Mason,” as she put the tray down.

“I’ve made you a bit o’ toast,” the woman remarked drily, “and I thought you could eat an egg.”

After which she waddled out of the room.

Youth and health asserted themselves then and there. The arrival of Mrs. Mason, the tea-tray, the hot buttered toast and fresh egg acted like a thaw on the girl’s frozen senses. She fell to with relish and vigour, all the men watching her eat as if the sight of her enjoying her tea was the one sight they had been longing for. At one moment she looked up and caught her father’s eyes fixed upon her.

“Glad to be back?” he asked somewhat wistfully, as he came round to her and stood close to her chair.

She didn’t reply in so many words, but with a graceful kittenish movement she leaned over and pressed her cheek against his coat-sleeve, whilst a soft look stole into her eyes.

Sentiment being apparently a reprehensible display in social intercourse, several men at once cleared their throats, expectorated on the dusty floor, wiped their mouths with the backs of their hands, and gave sundry other signs of complete indifference. Then one of them suddenly remarked:

“You did know the war was over, didn’t you, kid?”

She nodded.

“Yes, we knew that,” she said. “Someone sent a lot of oranges to celebrate the occasion, and there was suet pudding one day. November, wasn’t it?”

They all nodded in reply, and after a pause she went on:

“All the boys come home yet?”

“Most of ’em,” someone said. And then suddenly they were all silent. One or two enquiring glances were shot at Bill, who mutely shook his head. Once more there was universal clearing of throats, and presently a call for Mrs. Mason. The girl had been silent for a minute or so; then she said quietly, all at once:

“You needn’t tell me: I know.”

They understood and said nothing, and after another second she added:

“He was killed?”

Her father nodded.

“A week before the armistice,” he said. And one or two of the others also nodded their heads in a sage manner and said slowly:

“Yes, a week before the armistice. That’s when it was.”

With this the incident was closed. The girl went on slowly sipping her tea. The men started a discussion on the subject of some new police regulations that seemed greatly to excite them, but did not interest her in the least. And presently she felt an immense lassitude, a longing for her own comfy bed, with the spring mattress and the light, warm quilt. Her father caught her out yawning.

“Would you like to go upstairs, kid?” he asked.

“Yes, I would,” she replied. “I feel as if I could sleep on and off for hours and hours.”

She rose and clung to his arm.

“S’long everybody,” Bill said, giving his friends a comprehensive nod. “See you to-night as usual. Same place.”

They all said “S’long” and at once resumed their discussion on the new police regulations, whilst Bill picked up the girl’s suit-case and led her out of the room.

II

The evening meeting took place in a private room at the “Bishop’s Apron” in Milsom Street. When Bill arrived, his friends were already there. “Well, how’s the kid?” one of them asked as soon as Bill had thrown down his hat and joined them at the table. He was tall, with sandy hair sprinkled with grey, clean-shaved crimson face, a snub nose, and very round pale blue eyes.

“Pretty fair,” Bill replied curtly.

“She seemed kind of quiet this morning,” another man remarked.

Before Bill spoke again, he poured himself out a mugful of ale from the huge jug that stood in the centre of the table, then having carefully wiped his mouth with the back of his hand he said slowly:

“Well, what can you expect? We did do the dirty on her, didn’t we?”

“It couldn’t be helped,” the sandy-haired giant retorted.

“Any one of us,” someone added, “would have got fourteen years. What’s eighteen months to a kid her age?”

“And you yourself, Bill——”

Bill brought down the palm of his hand with a bang upon the table.

“I didn’t say one way or the other, did I? Laddie said the kid seemed quiet. She was not likely to fall on our necks all at once, was she? after eighteen months she’s had—and Jim gone without her seeing him again. And one thing and another. Now, was she?” he went on, and cast a kind of defiant glance all round at the familiar faces before him.

“I never thought she cared much about Jim,” one man remarked.

“That’s not the point,” Bill retorted—“just part and parcel of the same thing. She’ll get over it presently, of course, but just now she feels a bit hipped, and that’s all about it.”

There was silence for a moment or two after that, and then one man, who seemed different from the rest of the party by reason of his tously brown hair and beard, his narrow almond-shaped eyes and parchment-coloured skin that gave him a distinctly foreign look, leaned forward, his arms on the table, and addressed the company in general.

“What exactly happened about the girl?” he asked. “I never knew really.”

At first nobody seemed inclined to embark on the story. “You tell him, Bill,” someone suggested.

“Not me,” Bill rejoined. “I want bygones to be bygones. I’d much rather not talk about it any more.”

But the others insisted.

“It’s only fair Paul should know,” one of them said.

“It’d best come from you,” added another.

And the one they called Paul clinched the matter with a persuasive:

“Come on, Bill.”

“It was over that affair at Deansthorpe close by here,” the sandy-haired man remarked, by way of setting the ball rolling.

“Well!” Bill broke in with a loud oath, “if Kilts is going to tell the story——”

“No, no, Bill; you go on!” was the universal comment in response.

“Well, then,” Bill resumed after a slight pause, “it was over that business at Deansthorpe, as Kilts says. We thought we were safe, because the people were all abroad, and we didn’t know that that swine of a caretaker was going to turn traitor. It wasn’t him either; it was his wife. He told her and she gave us away to the police. Anyway, we had come prepared for anything, you understand? The kid was with us, for she can climb like a cat and there’s no one like her for getting through a bit of an opening that you’d think couldn’t accommodate a mouse. Jim was along too; they’d called themselves engaged since the March previous and we had posted him down in the street below to give us warning in case of trouble coming. He was to give one whistle for ‘look out!’ two for ‘get away quick!’ and three for ‘run for your lives!’ ”

Like a true raconteur, Bill paused in his story in order to lubricate his throat. No one spoke, no one interrupted; they all sat round pulling away at their pipes or their cigars; for there was a box of choice Havanas upon the rough deal table and on a battered tin tray there was a bottle of green Chartreuse, evidently of the genuine, very expensive kind.

“We were up on the second floor,” Bill went on after a while, “and we had got the whole of the swag out of the safe. I must tell you that we’d been at work over three hours then; we had the pearls, and the rest of the jewellery, and a thousand or two in notes, and what’s more we’d got what we came for, all the letters from the German agent over in Holland which went to prove that Simeon Goldstein was doing a grand trade in the matter of selling information to the Germans. We reckoned on touching him for at least a hundred thousand for those letters, and we did too ultimately, didn’t we, mates?”

They all solemnly nodded assent.

The one they called Paul sat listening with his almond-shaped eyes fixed upon the speaker, whose every word evidently sank into his receptive brain.

“Laddie here put us up to the job about those letters,” Bill resumed, and then added with a touch of grim humour: “It was that information that gave him the entrée into our exclusive circle. He’s been one of us ever since, and it was the least we could do, to admit him into partnership just as we admitted you, Paul, for the information you gave us in the autumn. Laddie had been valet to old Goldstein, and had found out about the letters. Then one day he had the good fortune to meet me, we became pals, and there you are! Laddie is a rich man now, ain’t you, Laddie? Well, to resume. We’d got our swag comfortably tucked away, when we heard Jim’s whistle—once, twice—three times! It meant ‘fly for your lives.’ The kid—she’s a wonderful girl, I tell yer—peeps out of the window, and sees the cops all down below; and whilst we all say, ‘What’s to be done?’ she has already got a plan ready in her head. ‘Slip some of the goods into my pockets, Dad,’ she says to me. Just then that fool Spinks—the caretaker of the place, you understand—comes running in like a scared hen. You should have seen the kid how she turned on him. ‘While Jim and me have a little conversation with the police,’ she says to him, ‘you see that Dad and the others get away by the back door. If you don’t,’ she says, ‘or if they get caught, you are a dead man to-morrow.’ And he could see that she meant it too. I guessed, of course, what she meant to do, and so did the others as I say, and we did the dirty on her—that is, we let her get copped and saved ourselves. She just climbed out of the window and let herself down by the gutter, and fell straight into the arms of half a dozen police, who already had got Jim. She screamed and she fought like a little cat, all in order to give us time to get away.”

“She is a splendid girl, and no mistake,” Paul remarked with quiet enthusiasm.

“And of course they found some swag on her,” Bill continued, “and she got eighteen months for burglary and housebreaking. She wouldn’t have got so much only it wasn’t a first conviction, see? She had spent six months in a reformatory when she was fourteen, for helping me in a little bit of business, and then another year when she was sixteen. But all the same, if any of us had been caught that time, each with an automatic in our hip pocket, it would have been fourteen years for us. Jim was collared for the army and got killed a month later, and the kid got eighteen months; but, after all, what’s that in life when you are young?”

“And we shouldn’t have had the letters,” one of the others remarked sententiously.

“Oh! aye! the letters!” Kilts rejoined with a light laugh. “They were the principal swag, and we’d got them all right.”

“We sold them to Sir Simeon Goldstein for one hundred thousand pounds, and cheap at the price. He daren’t prosecute, and declared that the swag which was found in the kid’s pockets was all that was stolen from him that night. He never said anything about the safe having been tampered with. Of course not; on the contrary, he was in a mortal funk that the police should get one of us before he had completed the transaction about the letters and paid over the money, which he had to do bit by bit, so as not to arouse his banker’s suspicions. And even now we’ve kept one letter back in case he should think of doing the dirty on us. And we’ve got the money,” Bill concluded, once more striking the table with the palm of his hand, so that glasses and mugs rattled in chorus, “ten thousand solid pounds each of us, six men, and forty thousand I’ve got put by for the kid, and jolly well she deserves it, too. But for her, where would we all be, I’d like to know?”

He took a long drink: the story had been told, and Paul still hung, quietly enthusiastic, upon his lips. The others continued to smoke in silence; each appeared buried in his own thoughts.

“What’s the girl doing now?” Paul asked after a while.

“I left her,” Bill replied, “just playing with her jewellery. I got her some pearls, you know, and diamond ear-rings from that place in Bond Street. None of you mates wanted to join me in that game; but I made a good haul all the same. I wanted the kid to have some nice things when she came out; and women love that sort of thing. She hardly looked at the draft I gave her for forty thousand quid.”

Paul gave a prolonged whistle.

“Forty thousand!” he exclaimed. “Jerusalem!”

“Price of eighteen months in quod,” Bill retorted curtly, “and keeping us out of it. Cheap, I call it.”

“And so do I,” one of the others asserted emphatically.

Apparently it was the general opinion. But for the kid they could not have got that pretty little bit of blackmail going with Sir Simeon Goldstein. Most of them would be doing their fourteen years’ penal servitude instead. Blackmailers, forgers, thieves—potential murderers probably—but they weren’t going to do the dirty on the kid over the money. (Try to explain that to your own satisfaction, Messrs. Psycho-Analysts!)

The conversation now drifted away from the main subject. Only Paul remained thoughtful. He had never come across anything of the sort in all his life. But the others soon broke in on his meditations. He was a new recruit admitted into this little army of international, not altogether uneducated criminals by reason of his connection with some of those wealthy Russians who had managed to get away from their country with most of their valuables. Plans, therefore, had to be made whereby Paul’s knowledge and connections could most profitably be utilised. Thus the evening wore on.

Bill was the first to break up the party.

“I was up early this morning,” he remarked with a grin, “and want to go bye-byes.”

It was about a quarter of an hour before closing time. Arrangements were made for meeting the next day, after which Bill made his way back to his home in Pierson Street where he might still have the chance of giving the kid a good-night kiss before she went to sleep. Bill gave a sudden sigh of content. It was nice having the kid home again. He had no idea how he would miss her, when she went.

The others sat on smoking until the barman came to warn them that he was putting up the shutters:

“Closing time, gentlemen.”

They all turned out into the street and walked away together for a little distance until they felt no longer disturbed by either the lights of the “Bishop’s Apron” or by that of one of the rare street-lamps. In the gloom they came to a halt, continued an interrupted discussion for a minute or two, and were just nodding curt “good-nights” to one another, when Kilts suddenly exclaimed:

“Hello! here’s Bill back again!”

“What on earth——?” ejaculated one of the others.

No wonder the rest of the sentence died unuttered in his throat. Bill came running down the street, hatless, his arms waving, his loose hair flying about his face. He fell like a dead weight against Kilts, who had to stand firm, or he would have fallen under the impact and the pair of them would have rolled over in the mud.

“My God!” Bill cried hoarsely. “The kid!” A shower of anxious queries and a vigorous shaking from Kilts brought him out of his state of semi-consciousness.

“She’s gone!”

“Gone?” Kilts exclaimed. “Nonsense!”

“I tell you she’s gone,” Bill retorted with a rough oath. “Left me a letter to say she’d gone.”

With a hand that shook like a tree in a gale, he fumbled in his pocket and brought out a crumpled scrap of paper.

“Let’s see it,” Paul said, and took the paper out of Bill’s trembling hand.

“Not here; come to my place,” Bill murmured, suddenly sobered at sight of a passer-by who had eyed the group with an obvious air of suspicion. The advice was sound. They did not look the sort of men whom any bobby would pass unconcernedly by, and though this quarter of Yeominster is lonely enough and dark enough to suit any night-bird, there were occasional belated pedestrians who might prove in the way, as well as a point policeman not two hundred yards away. Anyway, they all decided to follow Bill’s advice and to adjourn to his place, there to hear the details of this unexpected adventure. They parted company and, each going his own way, they met again ten minutes later in the basement of the house in Pierson Street where they had so heartily welcomed the kid that very morning.

As soon as they were all assembled, Bill spread the paper in front of him on the table and with his moist palm smoothed out its creases.

“This is what she says,” he began; then he read out the contents of the letter.

“I am going away for a bit, father. I feel I couldn’t stand the life here. Not just yet. I want to get out of it all, be free to lead my own life for a while. Don’t try to find me. If you leave me quite alone I’ll come back to you some day—probably very soon, as I dare say I shall get as sick of my new life as I am of the old. But if you try to get me back before I am ready for you, then I’ll never come. So leave me alone, and like Bo-Peep’s sheep I’ll come home all right. I am,

“Yr dutiful and loving daughter.”

“There now,” Bill said when he had finished reading, “what do you think of that?”

“Has she got any money?” queried the practical Kilts.

“She’s got the draft, hasn’t she?” Bill retorted curtly.

“Draft?” put in Paul with a slight uplift of his straight dark brows.

“On a banker in Amsterdam,” Bill replied—“forty thousand pounds. I gave it to her to-day, and the pearls and the diamonds. She took away the lot.”

“You could wire to the bank in Amsterdam to stop payment of the draft until you come. She’d have to wait then.”

“Yes,” nodded one or two of the others, “you could do that.”

“I could,” Bill remarked curtly. Slowly, deliberately he smoothed and folded the fateful letter and slipped it into his breast pocket. Then only he said quietly: “But I won’t.”

“You won’t?” Paul exclaimed. “But surely you want her back?”

“I do. God knows I do. But I won’t do the dirty on her again. Not about the money. If the kid wants to have her fling with it, let her. She’ll come home one day, when she’s sick of it all. But let her have her fling. We’ve done the dirty on her once, I won’t do it again. She’ll be all right, and one day, perhaps, she’ll come home.”

III

In this part of Russia the winter comes along unheralded. Three days ago at the Koursk races the ladies in the stands had to hold up their parasols to shield themselves against the hot sun; to-day it was snowing. It had been snowing for the past twenty-four hours. The winter had suddenly set in with a blizzard, and now in the bridle-paths the snow lay a quarter of a metre thick, and in the fields the maize bent under its heavy crystal load. In the pope’s garden the crimson zinnias, still in bloom, held each a little pointed hillock of snow, so that they looked like rows of cherry tarts capped with a mound of whipped cream.

It was long past midnight, and the snow still fell, although the weather-wise were prophesying that there would come a thaw before the real winter finally settled down. In the small village isba, doors and windows were hermetically closed; the huge tiled stove in one corner of the low-raftered room gave out an intense, almost over-powering heat. The wooden floor, innocent of covering, exhaled an odour of ill-kept stables and of stale grease. From the rafters hung bunches of orange-coloured maize, the only vivid note in the drab harmony of blacks and greys, just a compound of half a century of smoke and dirt. It was impossible to see through the small windows—not more than a foot square, either of them—what went on outside. But indoors it was cheery enough. Drab and primitive as was the whole aspect of the place, it was lighted by an electric lamp which hung from the ceiling just above the square centre table fashioned of solid, dark pine, on the smooth top of which numberless past libations had left patterns of sticky rings.

Round the table half a dozen men sat smoking and drinking silvorium. Four of them were engaged in a game of Tarok. The fumes of black tobacco and pungent spirit, mingled with the odour of perspiring humanity, hung like a pall between the rafters and the shaggy heads of these men. The noise in the room was at times deafening. The four Tarok players invariably all talked at once, and when they did not happen to have anything to say, they either swore lustily at the caprices of Chance, or else cleared their throats and expectorated with a sound like the grinding of an ungreased wheel upon its axle.

These four men had the strong facial characteristics of the Semitic race. Three of them, in fact, wore the long black gabardine buttoned from chin to ankle, and greasy at the shoulders, the skull-cap, and the ringlets in front of the ears, the distinctive wear of the Israelites in this part of Europe. The other, whose features were no less strongly marked, wore Western clothes of black broadcloth that showed numerous marks of wear and dirt. He appeared to be a man of wealth and of authority among his companions; he had on an old-fashioned, heavy gold watch-chain and a ring on his finger set with a huge solitaire diamond; he was chawing the fag-end of an excellent cigar, and he seemed to be the only man in the room who could command silence when he chose, and this he did now and then by bringing the palm of his hand down with a crash on the table.

Of the other two occupants of the isba, one, dressed in a rough tweed suit, his trousers tucked into huge leather boots, had upon his face and all about him that pronounced Slav type which approaches the Mongol. He was slight of build but looked wiry and even powerful; his skin was of a yellow parchment-like colour; his high cheek-bones looked like polished ivory; his eyes were shrewd, light brown in colour and almond-shaped. But for the long oval shape of his face and the tously pale brown of his hair, he might have been taken for an Asiatic. He talked little, and there was an endless number of cigarette ends on a metal tray before him. His coarse, spatulated fingers were stained with nicotine, and bits of stale tobacco and of ash had settled in his sparse moustache and beard.

The sixth man, on the other hand, was obviously a foreigner. For one thing, when he did talk, he did not raise his voice to a screech like the others, nor did he expectorate or noisily clear his throat. He, too, was dressed in a rough tweed suit, which though travel-stained looked not only as if it had known better days, but also as if it had recently been in contact with a clothes-brush; his chin and upper lip were shaved, his hair tidy, even his hands looked as if they had recently been washed. Amongst these loose-limbed Israelites he looked a regular giant, powerful of build, with fists that looked as if they could fell an ox. His hair was of a rich sandy colour slightly tinged with grey, his face was florid, and his eyes full and blue. He, too, was smoking an excellent Havana whilst watching the game of Tarok—which obviously he did not understand—with a mixture of unwilling interest and thinly veiled contempt.

“Wait! wait!” the player in the broadcloth exclaimed at one moment with an excited flourish of the arm. “I win this Pagat Ultimo—a wonderful Pagat Ultimo—and then I tell you what I think of the whole affair.”

He spoke German with that peculiar lisp characteristic of his race and which always sounds to foreign ears like an expression of mock humility. Now he rapped his cards down on the table one by one.

“Tarok!” he shouted in a stentorian voice that caused the rafters to shake and the electric pendant to quiver above his head. “Can you beat the twelve, Aaron Mosenthal? No? Then the eight? No? The seven, and the four? No one any more Tarok, and here comes the little Pagat, and I get twenty for tricks and fifty for the Ultimo! Now, Mr. Kilts,” he concluded, turning a triumphant, perspiring face to the foreigner, “what do you think of that? Have you ever seen a better-played Ultimo in your life?”

“I can’t say I have,” the stranger replied in a moderately fluent German that had a distinctly North-country—not to say Scottish—intonation in the pronunciation of some of the consonants; “but then I don’t understand your silly game. We don’t play it in my country.”

“No,” one of the players retorted with a loud laugh, “but you will one day. Why, you have just started to play Mah-Jongg, which the Chinese gave up as old-fashioned two hundred years ago.”

This sally was evidently considered to be very witty, for it was greeted with loud guffaws; one man nearly rolled off his chair, laughing. The man in authority slapped the foreigner familiarly on the back, which was a great condescension, as he was a great man, was Peter Abramovitch Stanko, justice of the peace and people’s commissary for the district of Ostolga in the province of Koursk.

The perpetrator of the joke, delighted with his success, whisked an exceedingly dirty, bright-coloured handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped his streaming forehead. The ringlets in front of his ears were ginger-coloured, as were the wisps of lank hair that protruded from beneath his skull-cap. His eyes were the colour of burnt sienna, innocent of eyelashes, and his nose, sharp and pointed above a narrow, receding jaw, gave his whole face a ludicrous resemblance to a dachshund.

Commissary Peter Abramovitch Stanko gazed with unconcealed triumph on the faces of his opponents, who were taking their defeat with a great fund of philosophy and were already engaged in counting out some greasy paper money, which they then pushed across the table toward the winner. There ensued a hullabaloo on the merits and demerits of the Ultimo, and on the tactics that should have been followed in order to avert the catastrophe. The winner shouted louder than the rest; in the intervals of mopping his forehead he demonstrated how he would have defeated any combination set up against him. The babel of raucous voices, in which the man with the almond-shaped eyes took his full share, once more became deafening; alone the foreigner took no part in the discussion: he sat in silence smoking his excellent Havana, the fumes of which were a sweet and welcome odour in this reeking hovel. Anon he drew his watch out of his pocket, and when he had caught the eye of the man in the broadcloth, he tapped the watch significantly with his forefinger, whereupon the other stopped arguing and shouting and banged the table with his fist, causing the mugs of silvorium to jump and to spill their contents.

“Hold your jaws now, all of you,” he shouted at the top of his stentorian voice, “and put the cards away. Mr. Kilts and Sergine are going by the train at five o’clock; it is past two already. So if you have any serious questions to ask, now is the time to do it; but every time Mr. Kilts begins to talk business, you all make such a noise, he can’t hear himself speak.”

“You speak good, Peter Abramovitch,” the red-haired Jew said sententiously. “Let us talk a bit now, if you like. I see you don’t want to play any more,” he added rather spitefully, as he pushed the cards together in a heap; “you have won.”

And as the others shrugged their shoulders, obviously resigned to defeat, he went on airily: “you can give us our revanche to-morrow——”

“Did I not tell you to hold your jaw, Jakob Grossman?” Peter Abramovitch broke in sternly. “If I don’t have silence until Mr. Kilts has told us about the business, I send you all packing, and the affair is finished as far as you are concerned. Is that clear?”

Apparently it was. The other players looked shamefaced. One or two of them muttered something under their breath; but within a minute or two silence reigned in the room.

“Now, Mr. Kilts,” Peter Abramovitch said pompously, “you speak.”

“What do you want me to say?” the man they called Kilts retorted.

“Well, you see,” the other condescended to explain, “the comrades here don’t know much about the business. I shouldn’t have told them anything,” he went on naïvely, “only we shall want their help—if the thing is going to be successful.”

“I don’t see how it can help being successful,” Kilts rejoined with a dry laugh. “But you may be sure that my friends and I wouldn’t have troubled about you fellows either, if we could have carried on without you.”

“But you couldn’t,” retorted Peter Abramovitch complacently. “I am commissary of this district; without my visa no one can come in or out of here, and as the Bobrinsky belong to my district as you say——”

“It would be better,” here interposed the red-haired Jew drily, “if Mr. Kilts could tell us first just how things stand. Then we can judge—not?” And he glanced round for approval at his companions.

“Jakob Grossman is right,” one of them said, “I for one know nothing. All I was told was that——”

“Never mind what you were told, Aaron Mosenthal,” Peter Abramovitch broke in impatiently; “let comrade Kilts have his say. You begin at the beginning, Mr. Kilts,” he continued, addressing the Britisher, “then there is no dispute—no argument—what?”

“All right,” the other assented. “And in the devil’s name let me speak without interruption.” He paused for a moment and leaning his arms over the table, his cigar between his fingers, he cast a comprehensive glance upon the eager faces before him. “As far as me and my mates are concerned,” he then resumed, “the matter stands like this. One of us is a floor-waiter in an hotel in London: he has sharp ears; he is a Swiss by birth, but speaks several languages fluently. One day he took a tea-tray up to a visitor whose name is Princess Bobrinsky——”

“Bobrinsky!” ejaculated Grossman, unable to restrain his excitement. “Oh! but the Bobrinskys——”

“Didn’t I say you were not to interrupt?” Peter Abramovitch shouted at the top of his voice. “Do you want me to throw up the business, or do you not?”

“So, so, Peter Abramovitch,” the other retorted meekly, “do not lose your temper. Are we not all listening?”

“Go on, comrade,” Peter Abramovitch rejoined, addressing the Scot, who, with the stolidity of his race, had calmly waited until the interruptions had subsided into a repressed murmur. Then only did he go on.

“This Princess Bobrinsky,” he said, “had a friend with her. They were talking English, but Rudolph—that’s our mate, the waiter—caught a word or two that made him prick up his ears, not only while he was in the room, but when he had got the other side of the door. He gathered from the conversation that Prince Bobrinsky has been reported dead since the Wrangel retreat to Odessa——”

“Yes! I know,” Grossman once more broke in with a gasp of excitement, but relapsed at once into a kind of agitated silence under the stern eye of Peter Abramovitch, whilst the Scotchman continued:

“Rudolf also learned that at one time the Bobrinskys were very rich, and that among other things they had a quantity of jewellery which was of enormous value. The Princess Bobrinsky was talking about this to her friend, and said that before her husband had joined Wrangel’s army he had put these jewels in a safe place which, now that he was dead, was known only to herself.”

But at this point not even Peter Abramovitch’s authority was strong enough to quell the tumult that ensued. Apparently every one of those present knew something about the Bobrinsky valuables and each wanted to put in a word telling what he knew. Grossman, of course, was to the fore. He was landlord of the isba; he sold silvorium to every man and heard all the gossip within five versts of the place. What he didn’t know of the affairs of his neighbours was not worth a kick on the shins. But he was quite modest about his knowledge; with a condescending wave of the arm he pointed to the yellow-faced Russian, who, up to now, though he had talked at times as much and as loudly as the rest, had seemed to be more an observer of events than an active participant in the discussions.

“Tell them, Paul Alexandrovitch,” Grossman said sententiously. “You know!” And he added comprehensively to the rest of the assembly:

“Paul Alexandrovitch Sergine here knows all about the Bobrinsky emeralds. He was a menial for a long time in the household—a secretary or something—and if our wonderful revolution hadn’t broken out when it did, why, those emeralds would have been ours before now. Eh! comrade Paul?”

Paul Sergine shrugged his shoulders; perhaps he was not altogether prepared to say that. As for the emeralds—well! he certainly knew all about them. “I have seen them,” he said, “dozens of times. The old Bobrinsky woman—the mother of the present man—used to put ’em on when she went to Court. Besides, they were famous all over Russia.”

“Sergine is right,” Peter Abramovitch explained to the Scotchman. “Those emeralds were spoken of with as much awe as the diamonds of the Queen of England. I have seen them myself. I was deputy administrator to the Bobrinskys at one time, and I know that their family jewels were insured for something like eight million roubles—that would be about eight hundred thousand pounds of your money in those days.”

“Anyhow, I gather that they are worth getting,” the Scotchman rejoined with a dry laugh. “My mates and I found that out at once. They sent me out here because I could speak German. I even know a word or two of Russian, and of course our friend Sergine looked after me; so I’ve got on quite well so far. When Rudolf came to us with the tale, we got at once in touch with Paul, who’s got a job with the Russian grain commission in London, and Paul knew the ropes all right enough, didn’t you, mate? He thought of you at once, Mr. Peter Abramovitch. ‘Peter Abramovitch is the man for you,’ he said at once. Great man, Paul—ain’t you, mate? He knows the ropes; he’ll tell you what me and my mates want to do, and if you do it—why, there you are,”, he concluded, speaking the last three words in his native tongue, because he didn’t feel that any German phrase would render the full force of his argument.

“There you are!” It meant: “We in England have set this thing going. It is for you to help us do the rest.”

Strangely enough, the Scotchman’s tones, if not the exact words, had set them thinking. There they were! no question about that. But the fact had not started one of those tumultuous discussions when each man strove to shout the other down. No! They were all silent now. Brooding. Thinking of those emeralds and marvelling what each individual man would make out of the affair. And what, anyway, this affair was going to be. It sounded fairly simple and feasible, but——

All the same, they were glad that Paul Alexandrovitch Sergine was in it. Paul was one of themselves. One never knew with those foreigners—but Paul was all right. Paul would see that his compatriots didn’t get cheated. Oh, yes, Paul was all right. Mosenthal, for instance, knew him intimately.

“How should we not know one another, eh, Paul?” he said genially. “You and I was in gaol together in ’15, you remember, because we ran away before the Austrians at Dorna Watra. You remember?”

Paul nodded genially in return. He remembered perfectly. The army was fighting like mad. They had no ammunition; what they had was worthless, supplied by a venal contractor who was a great man in Moscow since the revolution. The Austrians were well mounted, well equipped—their disaster had not yet come; and the army—the Tsar’s army—having no ammunition, fought to the death, fought their way to Lvoff with the butt-end of their rifles. Great time that!—Paul remembered thinking that it was not good enough and that he and some of his mates—amongst whom Mosenthal—decided that running away was a great deal better. They were caught and dragged to Lvoff, where they were to have been shot, only the superior officers had other things to think about than shooting a few cowards.

Anyway, that was a long time ago. There had been a good many revolutions of the social wheel since then; and now chance was going to give it yet another turn, all in favour of Paul Alexandrovitch Sergine and his mates. Peter Abramovitch Stanko had now taken the direction of affairs; he had no need to demand silence, because what conversation there was after that final “There you are!” was carried on in whispers; but he wanted to know just what that foreigner and his mates would expect and what they were prepared to offer in exchange for services rendered.

“Fifty-fifty,” the Scotchman said firmly. “We want your help and you can’t get on without us. So don’t let’s argue.”

“Let’s hear the plan,” Grossman suggested, and everyone nodded approval.

It was past four o’clock of this cold October morning before every phase, every eventuality of the plan had been discussed, argued over, nearly fought over, and finally approved. Then only did they all rise and cheerfully bid one another good-night. The Scotchman—Mr. Kilts—was to catch the slow train from Koursk which would get him to Lvoff the following afternoon. Paul Sergine would follow a few days later. Peter Abramovitch Stanko, who was justice of the peace and commissary for the district, had seen to it that permits and visas were all in order. Mr. Kilts had come with a fine proposition, one of the finest ever brought to the notice of this international organisation of thieves, forgers, and other miscreants, and as the Russian members of the organisation were important men in their own country, it was up to them to arrange for the safety and comfort of their British associates.

On a row of pegs against the wall hung half a dozen fur-lined coats. Each man selected his own and arranged the big fur collar about his ears. They wore shabby clothes, all of them, and were apparently very short of soap, but they all had valuable fur coats and their wives wore priceless gems in their ears.

Peter Abramovitch with Paul Sergine and the foreigner from England were the first to leave.

Grossman, with the obsequiousness peculiar to his race, opened the door to them and bowed them out with many scrapings and arching of his long, lean spine. When he pulled open the door, the snow and wind hit him in the face. It was the coldest hour of the night; some two hours later the cold pale dawn would break behind the pine-clad hills. Grossman busied himself with a couple of storm-lanterns and gave one to Peter Abramovitch, and together the three men went out into the night.

The others tarried a while longer. It was a big affair that they had been discussing. No doubt the thought of it would keep them awake a long while yet.

“How would you like to go to England, Aaron Mosenthal?” the innkeeper asked, when at last they were all ready to go.