At the precinct station the squat man gave a name and an address to
the bored sergeant at the desk, passed out a cigar, lit one himself,
expressed some innocuous opinions upon one or two topics of the day, and
walked leisurely out of the precinct. He wanted to laugh. These pigheads
had never thought to question his presence in the backyard of the house
in Seventy-ninth Street. It was the way he had carried himself.
Those years in New York, prior to the war, had not been wasted. The
brass-buttoned fools!
Serenely unconscious that he was at liberty by explicit orders, because
the Department of Justice did not care to trap a werewolf before
ascertaining where the pack was and what the kill, he proceeded
leisurely to the corner, turned, and broke into a run, which carried
him to a drug store in Eightieth Street. Here he was joined by two men,
apparently coal heavers by the look of their hands and faces.
“They will take him to a hospital. Find where, then notify me. Remember,
this is your business, and woe to you if you fail. Where is it?” One of
the men extended an object wrapped in ordinary grocer's paper.
“Ha! That's good. I shall enjoy myself presently. Remember: telephone me
the moment you learn where they take him. He is still alive, bunglers!
And you came away empty-handed.”
“There was nothing on him. We searched.”
“He has hidden them in one of those rooms. I'll attend to that later.
Watch the hospital for an hour or so, then telephone for information
regarding his condition. Is that motor for me? Very good. Remember!”
Inside the taxicab the squat man patted the object on his knees, and
chuckled from time to time audibly. It would be worth all that journey,
all he had gone through since dawn that morning. Stefani Gregor! After
these seven long years--the man who had betrayed him! To reach into his
breast and squeeze his heart as one might squeeze a bit of cheese! Many
things to tell, many pictures to paint. He rode far downtown, wound in
and out of the warehouse district for a while, then dismissed the taxi
and proceeded on foot to his destination--a decayed brick mansion of the
40's sandwiched in between two deserted warehouses. In the hall of the
first landing a man sat in a chair under the gas, reading a newspaper.
At the approach of the squat man he sprang to his feet, but a phrase
dissipated his apprehension and he nodded toward a door.
“Unlock it for me and see that I am not disturbed.”
Presently the squat man stood inside the room, which was dark. He struck
a match and peered about for the candle. The light discovered a room
barren of all furniture excepting the table upon which stood the candle,
and a single chair. In this chair was a man, bound. He was small and
dapper, his gray hair swept back a la Liszt. His chin was on his breast,
his body limp. Apparently the bonds alone held him in the chair.
The squat man laid his bundle on the table and approached the prisoner.
“Stefani Gregor, look up; it is I!” He drummed on his chest like a
challenging gorilla. “I, Boris Karlov!”
Slowly the eyelids of the prisoner went up, revealing mild blue eyes.
But almost instantly the mildness was replaced by an agate hardness, and
the body became upright.
“Yes, it is Boris, whom you betrayed. But I escaped by a hair, Stefani;
and we meet again.”
What good to tell this poor madman that Stefani Gregor had not betrayed
him, that he had only warned those marked for death? There was no longer
reason inside that skull. To die, probably in a few moments. So be it.
Had he not been ready for seven years? But that poor boy--to have come
all these thousands of miles, only to walk into a trap! Had he found
that note? Had they killed him? Doubtless they had or Boris Karlov would
not be in this room.
“We killed him to-night, Stefani, in your rooms. We threw out the food
so he would have to seek something to eat. The last of that breed, stem
and branch! We are no longer the mud; we ourselves are the heels. We are
conquering the world. Today Europe is ours; to-morrow, America!”
A wintry little smile stirred the lips of the man in the chair. America,
with its keen perceptions of the ridiculous, its withering humour!
“No more the dissolute opera dancers will dance to your fiddling,
Stefani, while we starve in the town. Fiddler, valet, tutor, the rivers
and seas of Russia are red. We roll east and west, and our emblem
is red. Stem and branch! We ground our heels in their faces as for
centuries they ground theirs in ours. He escaped us there--but I was
Nemesis. He died to-night.”
The body in the chair relaxed a little. “He was clean and honest, Boris.
I made him so. He would have done fine things if you had let him live.”
“That breed?”
“Why, you yourself loved him when he was a boy!”
“Stem and branch! I loved my little sister Anna, too. But what did they
do to her behind those marble walls? Did you fiddle for her? What was
she when they let her go? My pretty little Anna! The fires of hell
for those damned green stones of yours, Stefani! She heard of them and
wanted to see them, and you promised.”
“I? I never promised Anna! ... So that was it? Boris, I only saw her
there. I never knew what brought her. But the boy was in England then.”
“The breed, the breed!” roared the squat man. “Ha, but you should have
seen! Those gay officers and their damned master--we left them with
their faces in the mud, Stefani; in the mud! And the women begged. Fine
music! Those proud hearts, begging Boris Karlov for their lives--their
faces in the mud! You, born of us in those Astrakhan Hills, you denied
us because you liked your fiddle and a full belly, and to play keeper
of those emeralds. The winding paths of torture and misery and death
by which they came into the possession of that house! And always the
proletariat has had to pay in blood and daughters. You, of the people,
to betray us!”
“I did not betray you. I only tried to save those who had been kind to
me.”
A cunning light shot into Karlov's eyes. “The emeralds!” He struck his
pocket. “Here, Stefani; and they shall be broken up to buy bread for our
people.”
“That poor boy! So he brought them! What are you going to do with me?”
“Watch you grow thin, Stefani. You want death; you shall want food
instead. Oh, a little; enough to keep you alive. You must learn what it
is to be hungry.”
The squat man picked up the bundle from the table and tore off the
wrapping paper. A violin the colour of old Burgundy lay revealed.
“Boris!” The man in the chair writhed.
“Have I waked you, Stefani?”--tenderly. “The Stradivarius--the very
grand duke of fiddles! And he and his damned officers, how they used to
call out--'Get Stefani to fiddle for us!' And you fiddled, dragged your
genius though the mud to keep your belly warm!”
“To save a soul, Boris--the boy's. When I fiddled his uncle forgot
to drag him into an orgy. Ah, yes; I fiddled, fiddled because I had
promised his mother!”
“The Italian singer! She was lucky to die when she did. She did not see
the torch, the bayonet, and the mud. But the boy did--with his English
accent! How he escaped I don't know; but he died to-night, and the
emeralds are in my pocket. See!” Karlov held the instrument close to
the other's face. “Look at it well, this grand duke of fiddles. Look,
fiddler, look!”
The huge hands pressed suddenly. There was brittle crackling, and a rare
violin became kindling. A sob broke from the prisoner's lips. What
to Karlov was a fiddle to him was a soul. He saw the madman fling the
wreckage to the floor and grind his heels into the fragments. Gregor
shut his eyes, but he could not shut his ears; and he sensed in that
cold, demoniacal fury of the crunching heel the rising of maddened
peoples.