CHAPTER XIII.
FOR LIFE OR DEATH.
No time had ever seemed so long to Colston as did the hour and a halfwhich passed after the departure of Soudeikin until his return. Hewould have given anything to have accompanied him to the station, butit would have been so very unwise to have incurred the risk of beingquestioned, and perhaps obliged to show the passport that Soudeikinwas to use, that he controlled his impatience as best he could, andlet events take their course.
At length, when he had looked at his watch for the fiftieth time, andfound that it indicated nearly half-past eleven, there was a heavyknock at the door. As it opened, Colston heard a rattle of arms and aclinking of chains. Then there was a sound of gruff guttural voicesin the entrance-hall, and the next moment the door of the room wasthrown open, and Soudeikin walked in, followed by a young man in theuniform of a lieutenant of the line, and after them came twosoldiers, to one of whom was handcuffed the Princess Ornovski, and tothe other Natasha.
Shocked as he was at the pitiable change that had taken place in theappearance of the two prisoners since he had last seen them infreedom, Colston was far too well trained in the school of conspiracyto let the slightest sign of surprise or recognition escape him.
He and Ivan rose as the party entered, greeted Soudeikin and salutedthe officer, hardly glancing at the two pale, haggard women in theirrough grey shapeless gowns and hoods as they stood beside the men towhom they were chained.
As the officer returned Colston's salute he turned to Soudeikin andsaid civilly enough--
"I did not know you had another guest. I hope we shall not overcrowdyou."
"By no means," replied the commissioner, waving his hand towardColston as he spoke. "This is only my nephew, Ernst Vronski, who isstaying with me for a day or two on his way through to NizhniNovgorod with his furs, and that is his servant, Ivan Arkavitch. Youneed not be uneasy. I have plenty of rooms, as I live almost alone,and I have set apart one for the prisoners which I think will satisfyyou in every way. Would it please you to come and see it?"
"Yes, we will go now and get them put in safety for the night, if youwill lead the way."
As the party left the room Colston caught one swift glance fromNatasha which told him that she understood his presence in the housefully, and he felt that, despite her miserable position, he had anally in her who could be depended upon.
The officer carefully examined the room which had been provided forthe two prisoners, tried the heavy shutters with which the windowswere closed, and took from Soudeikin the keys of the padlocks to thebars which ran across them. He then directed the prisoners to bereleased from their handcuffs and locked them in the room, stationingone of the soldiers at the door and sending the other to patrol theback of the house from which the two windows of the room looked out.
At the end of two hours the sentries were to change places, and intwo hours more they were to be relieved by a detachment from thenight patrol. This arrangement had been foreseen by Soudeikin, and ithad been settled that the rescue was to be attempted as soon as theguard had been changed.
This would give the prisoners time to get a brief but much neededrest after their long and miserable journey from Perm, penned up likesheep in iron-barred cattle trucks, and it would leave the drowsiestpart of the night, from four o'clock to sunrise, for the hazardouswork in hand.
"That is a pretty girl you have there, captain," said Colston, as theofficer returned to the sitting-room. "Is she for the mines orSakhalin?"
"For Sakhalin by sentence, but as a matter of fact for neither, asfar as I can see."
"You mean that the Little Father will pardon her or give her alighter sentence, I suppose."
The officer grinned meaningly as he replied--
"_Nu vot!_ That is hardly likely. What I mean is that CaptainKharkov, who is in command of the convict train from here, has hadinstructions to convey her as comfortably as possible, and with nomore fatigue than is necessary, to Tchit, in the Trans-Baikal, andthat he is also charged with a letter from the Governor of Perm tothe Governor of Tchit.
"You know these gentlemen like to do each other a good turn when theycan, and so, putting two and two together, I should say that hisExcellency of Perm has concluded that our pretty prisoner will serveto beguile the dulness of that Godforsaken hole in which hisExcellency of Tchit is probably dying of _ennui_. She will be morecomfortable there than at Sakhalin, and it is a lucky thing for herthat she has found favour in his Excellency's eyes."
Colston could have shot the fellow where he sat leering across thetable; but though his blood was at boiling point, he controlledhimself sufficiently to make a reply after the same fashion, and soonafter took his leave and retired for the night.
At four o'clock the guard was changed. The new officer, after takingthe keys, unlocked the door of the room in which Natasha and thePrincess were confined, and roused them up to satisfy himself thatthey were still in safe keeping. It was a brutal formality, butperfectly characteristic of Siberian officialism.
The man who had been on guard so far joined the patrol and returnedto the barracks, while the new officer made himself comfortable witha bottle of brandy, with which Soudeikin had obligingly provided him,in the sitting-room. It was a bitterly cold night, and he drank acouple of glasses of it in quick succession. Ten minutes after he hadswallowed the second he rolled backwards on the couch on which he wassitting and went fast asleep. A few moments later he had ceased tobreathe.
Then the door opened softly and Soudeikin and Colston slipped intothe room. The former shook him by the shoulder. His eyes remainedhalf closed, his head lolled loosely from side to side, and his armshung heavily downwards.
"He's gone," whispered Soudeikin; and, without another word, they setto work to strip the uniform off the lifeless body. Then Colstondressed himself in it and gave his own clothes to Soudeikin.
As soon as the change was effected, Colston took the keys and went tothe door at which the sentry was keeping guard. The man was alreadyhalf asleep, and blinked at him with drowsy eyes as he challengedhim. For all answer the Terrorist levelled his pistol at his head andfired. There was a sharp crack that could hardly have been heard onthe other side of the wall, and the man tumbled down with a bulletthrough his brain.
Colston stepped over the corpse, unlocked the door, and found Natashaand the Princess already dressed in male attire as two peasant boys,with sheepskin coats and shapkas, and wide trousers tucked into theirhalf boots. These disguises had been provided beforehand bySoudeikin, and hidden in the bed in which they were to sleep.
Colston grasped their hands in silence, and the three left the room.In the passage they found Ivan and Soudeikin, the former dressed inthe uniform of the soldier who had been on guard outside the house,and whose half-stripped corpse was now lying buried in the snow.
"Ready?" whispered Soudeikin.
"Have you finished in there?" asked Colston, jerking his thumbtowards the sitting-room.
Soudeikin nodded in reply, and the five left the house by the backdoor.
It was then after half-past four. Fortunately it was a dark cloudymorning, and the streets of the town were utterly deserted. By onesand twos they stole through the by-streets and lanes without meetinga soul, until Soudeikin at length stopped at a house on the easternedge of the town about a mile from the Tobolsk road.
He tapped at one of the windows. The door was softly opened by aninvisible hand, and they entered and passed through a dark passageand out into a stable-yard behind the house. Under a shed they founda troika, or three-horse sleigh, with the horses ready harnessed, incharge of a man dressed as a mujik.
They got in without a word, all but Soudeikin, who went to thehorses' heads, while the other man went and opened the gates of theyard. The bells had been removed from the harness, and the horses'feet made no sound as Soudeikin led them out through the gate. Ivantook the reins, and Colston held out his hand from the sleigh. Therewas a roll of notes in it, and as he gave it to Soudeikin hewhispered--
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br /> "Farewell! If we succeed, the Master shall know how well you havedone your part."
Soudeikin took the money with a salute and a whispered farewell, andIvan trotted his horses quietly down the lane and swung round intothe road at the end of it.
So far all had gone well, but the supreme moment of peril had yet tocome. A mile away down the road was the guard-house on the Tobolskroad leading out of the town, and this had to be passed before therewas even a chance of safety.
As there was no hope of getting the sleigh past unobserved, Colstonhad determined to trust to a rush when the moment came. He had givenNatasha and the Princess a magazine pistol apiece, and held a bracein his own hands; so among them they had a hundred shots.
Ivan kept his horses at an easy trot till they were within a hundredyards of the guard-house. Then, at a sign from Colston, he suddenlylashed them into a gallop, and the sleigh dashed forward at aheadlong speed, swept round the curve past the guard-house, hurlingone of the sentries on guard to the earth, and away out on to theTobolsk road.
The next instant the notes of a bugle rang out clear and shrill justas another sounded from the other end of the town. Colston at onceguessed what had happened. The inspector of the patrols, in going hisrounds, had called at Soudeikin's house to see if all was right, andhad discovered the tragedy that had taken place. He looked back andsaw a body of Cossacks galloping down the main street towards theguard-house, waving their lanterns and brandishing their spears abovetheir heads.
"Whip up, Ivan, they will be on us in a couple of minutes!" he criedand Ivan swung his long whip out over his horses' ears, and shoutedat them till they put their heads down and tore over the smooth snowin gallant style.
By the time the race for life or death really began they had a goodmile start, and as they had only four more to go Ivan did not sparehis cattle, but plied whip and voice with a will till the treeswhirled past in a continuous dark line, and the sleigh seemed to flyover the snow almost without touching it.
Still the Cossacks gained on them yard by yard, till at the end ofthe fourth mile they were less than three hundred yards behind. ThenColston leant over the back of the sleigh, and taking the best aim hecould, sent half a dozen shots among them. He saw a couple of theflying figures reel and fall, but their comrades galloped heedlesslyover them, yelling wildly at the tops of their voices, and everymoment lessening the distance between themselves and the sleigh.
Colston fired a dozen more shots into them, and had the satisfactionof seeing three or four of them roll into the snow. At the same timehe put a whistle to his lips, and blew a long shrill call thatsounded high and clear above the hoarse yells of the Cossacks.
Their pursuers were now within a hundred yards of them, and Natasha,speaking for the first time since the race had begun, said--
"I think I can do something now."
As she spoke she leaned out of the sleigh sideways, and began firingrapidly at the Cossacks. Shot after shot told either upon man orbeast, for the daughter of Natas was one of the best shots in theBrotherhood; but before she had fired a dozen times a bright gleam ofwhite light shot downwards over the trees, apparently from theclouds, full in the faces of their pursuers.
Involuntarily they reined up like one man, and their yells of furychanged in an instant into a general cry of terror. The Cossacks areas brave as any soldiers on earth, and they can fight any mortal foelike the fiends that they are, but here was an enemy they had neverseen before, a strange, white, ghostly-looking thing that floated inthe clouds and glared at them with a great blazing, blinding eye,dazzling them and making their horses plunge and rear like thingspossessed.
They were not long left in doubt as to the intentions of their newenemy. Something came rushing through the air and struck the groundalmost at the feet of their first rank. Then there was a flash ofgreen light, a stunning report, and men and horses were rent intofragments and hurled into the air like dead leaves before ahurricane.
Only three or four who had turned tail at once were left alive; andthese, without daring to look behind them, drove their spurs intotheir horses' flanks and galloped back to Tiumen, half mad withterror, to tell how a demon had come down from the skies, annihilatedtheir comrades, and carried the fugitives away into the clouds uponits back.
When they reached the town it was a scene of the utmost panic.Soldiers were galloping and running hither and thither, bugles weresounding, and the whole population were turning out into thesnow-covered streets. On every lip there were only twowords--"Natas!" "The Terrorists!"
The death sentence on Soudeikin, the sub-commissioner of police, hadbeen found pinned with a dagger to the table in the room in which laythe body of the lieutenant, with the bloody *T* on his forehead.Soudeikin had vanished utterly, leaving only his uniform behind him;so had the two prisoners for whom he had made himself responsible,and at the door of their room lay the corpse of the sentry with abullet-hole clean through his head from front to back, while in thesnow under one of the windows of the room lay the body of the othersentry, stabbed through the heart.
From the very midst of one of the strongholds of Russian tyranny inSiberia, two important prisoners and a police official had beenspirited away as though by magic, and now upon the top of all thewonder and dismay came the fugitive Cossacks with their wild taleabout the air-demon that had swooped down and destroyed their troopat a single blow. To crown all, half an hour later three horses, madwith fear, came galloping up the Tobolsk road, dragging behind theman empty sleigh, to one of the seats of which was pinned a scrap ofpaper on which was written--
"The daughter of Natas sends greeting to the Governor of Tiumen, andthanks him for his hospitality."
The Angel of the Revolution: A Tale of the Coming Terror Page 14