THE EVIL ONE TAKES A HAND
Peter rushed to the door and stood, staring.
Balls of red fire were shooting out into the air from the opened
casement of the room in the loft, flooding the place with light as they
burst with terrific explosions. In the light Peter could see his men
standing horror-struck, four below him at the bottom of the stairs, and
four on guard at the door. Those who had been clinging to Stas on the
landing had recoiled in fright before the fiery balls, and the half-wit
had seized the opportunity to slink stealthily away through their legs,
and make for the lower steps.
For a moment Peter stood motionless. In bodily things he was braver than
the brave, but in the face of such magic as this he was a coward; yet
though he trembled, he realized that he must play a man’s part if he
wished to keep the leadership of his band, and accordingly, spurring
himself up to a pitch of bravado, he rushed up the stairs from the
second floor to the third and stood there just as another bomb soared
out into the air.
“Come back! Come back!” they were shouting from below.
“Come up! Come up!” he commanded. “What are you frightened of?”
“It is the Evil One, himself!”
Peter shook his curved Cossack sword in the darkness. “Come up—come up,
I tell you, you cowardly dogs—come up or I’ll separate your coward
heads from your useless bodies. Come up, I say—come up!”
And so much was he feared that the three men on the second floor landing
crossed themselves in the manner of the Greek Church and went creeping
up after him.
“We have the treasure,” pleaded the nearest man in a trembling voice,
“let us escape from here. This is nothing human. This is the work of the
Evil One. Devils are abroad and a man is not sure of his soul.”
“Devils,” roared Peter, “bones and fiddlesticks! Come up here, you, and
be men. This is no devil. This is some joker who values his head but
lightly. If we do not silence him he will alarm the whole city before we
get back to the gate.”
“Up that,” he commanded a second later, shoving the first man against
the staircase to the loft. “Up that, and tell us what you see.”
The man mounted, trembling violently, for he was sure that the powers of
darkness themselves were working against them.
“The door is open here,” he whispered, “and no lights within.” A man
below him on the stairway passed the word along to Peter.
“Then up, every mother’s son of you,” ordered the leader. “There is a
man there. Put a knife in his throat and descend quickly.”
The rest pulled themselves up and entered the loft. After a few minutes
of impatient waiting Peter climbed the steps himself and pushed himself
across the dark threshold.
“What have you found?” he demanded impatiently.
“Nothing,” the answer came faintly from one corner of the loft.
“If there is any one here let him speak now,” Peter bellowed. His voice
drowned the quiet opening of the door of a closet in the back of the
room. “If we find any one it will go hard——”
Like a bolt of lightning out of a clear sky the loft was suddenly
illuminated with a glow of red fire as there leapt into existence out of
the blackness of the night the very incarnation of the Evil One in his
worst mood. Clad in fiery garments which smelled of fire and brimstone
and which seemed to blaze and burn and give off a greenish smoke and
flame, he moved slowly forward, waving in his right hand a scepter of
flaming red which was crackling with heat as a green bough crackles when
it burns, while from its end little balls of fire were dripping.
It was so sudden, so unexpected, this apparition in a pitch-black world
of night, of a red, fiery, glowing devil, that Peter, stout-hearted as
he was, let out a sudden shriek, and trembled like a leaf.
But if he trembled, the others went mad with fear. “Out! Out!” they
shrieked, crowding to the stairway.
Upon their heels came the fantastic demon waving his scepter right and
left and favoring first one and then another with smart blows, as they
fought to be first at the stairway. Two reached it at one time and went
scrambling down to be joined by the third a second later, who came
tumbling down upon them just as they gained the third-floor landing.
Peter, however, stood his ground for a moment. Turning about at the head
of the stairs he shouted, “Be you man or demon I will see what you have
in you,” and rushed with his drawn sword upon the weird figure. That one
simply stood aside as he rushed, and waved his hand in the direction of
the man’s face.
“Ahew—ahew!” the brigand screamed with pain, for something choking and
powdery was filling his eyes and throat. “Help—cowards—I am in the
hands of a thousand devils. Help, I say!”
There was no sound outside save the noise of the men scrambling down the
next stairway.
Peter stumbled blindly to the steps, and fairly slid down them, fearful
lest the phantom should follow and give him another dose. But the
phantom, though following, did not repeat his attack; he came slowly
down the stairs after the retreating party, hurling little bombs of
colored fire into the air, which as they exploded flooded the court with
lights of rainbow hues.
Below, the din was deafening. The dog had worked his head loose from the
bag which had been thrown over it, and was barking at the top of his
lungs. Men were shouting and crying out in terror, forgetful of caution
and the necessity for silence. Joseph who had been gagged and bound in
the rear room of the family’s dwelling had gotten his feet loose from
the ropes and was kicking with all his force against the wooden
partition wall, Elzbietka was crying out for aid, and heads were
beginning to emerge from open casements in all the adjoining buildings.
Some one in the street outside was calling loudly for the watch, and
Stas, having rescued himself from one predicament, was for no reason at
all pulling at the rope of the bell that hung over the door, its clamor
adding to the general uproar.
On the landing at the second floor the three retreating ruffians
collided with the four men standing there and almost toppled them into
the court. They had barely regained their balance when the lower
supports of the stairs, which had been groaning already from the
unaccustomed weight and traffic, suddenly collapsed and catapulted the
whole company, amidst indescribable turmoil, into the court below.
Peter, coming behind the three, managed to save himself by leaping
nimbly to the threshold of Pan Andrew’s dwelling, but the flaming figure
behind him remained momentarily on the stairs above the second floor
where the supports and staircase held firm. Not for long did he remain
there, however, for as Peter turned his back to disappear into the house
the pursuer leaped from the lower step of the remaining stairway and
landed squarely upon Peter, hurling him with a crash to the floor well
inside the front room of Pan Andrew’s dwelling.
Below in the court there was a veritable pandemonium—the crashing apart
of beam and beam where the staircase struck the ground, the shrieking of
the frightened, the moaning of the injured—for two men had been pinned
beneath the fallen staircase—the terror and distraction of the ruffians
on guard below whose one idea now was to escape through the outer door
before the arrival of the watch.
While all this was transpiring in the court the alchemist, who with his
chemicals and powders had caused all the trouble, shook his heavy
scepter, a club smeared with glowing resin, in the face of Peter who lay
prostrate beneath him and demanded:
“Now—what do you seek here?”
But Peter had gotten some of his courage back, and besides the voice
sounded more like that of a man than a devil. “I will not tell!”
“You will!”
“I will not.”
“You will be turned over to the watch.”
“I care not. They can learn nothing.”
“First let us have another look at you.”
He carefully drew a fire ball from a fold of his gown, keeping his
weight upon the man under him and holding one hand at his throat. The
ball he ignited by rubbing it against the floor and when it was burning
he tossed it upon the stone hearth. There was a flash of light and the
room was suddenly as bright as even day could make it.
But, after all, he did not look at Peter! For there was something else
in the room that claimed his attention at once. It was the large round
object that Peter had sought in Pan Andrew’s bed—there it lay upon the
floor a short arm’s length away, gleaming like a thousand prisms of
finest glass.
“Oho,” he exclaimed, “oho! So that’s it. Well, Pan Robber, it seems that
your expedition was no ordinary one. No common house looting,
this. . . . Lie still there, or I’ll sink these fingers into your
windpipe,” for Peter had tried to wriggle to one side while the
alchemist’s attention was taken with the new object.
“Who sent you here?” demanded the latter.
Peter was silent.
“But you must talk. Do you hear that—below?”
It was the night watch shouting, “Stand, in the name of the King.”
Peter whose courage was now revived, since he realized that it was a man
and not a devil that he was dealing with, decided to try a little
strategy.
“I will tell you all, if you will hide me here.”
“I give no promises. But tell me what you know.”
“Then see that.” He twisted one hand away from his captor as if to point
toward the shining object on the floor which was now gleaming like a
miniature sun in the last rays of the nearly burnt-out fire ball.
“I see it.” The alchemist glanced at it; the instant’s relaxation proved
fatal, however, for with the moment the under man’s right hand came
clear and tore the alchemist’s grip from his throat. In the struggle
that followed, the alchemist was no match for the lithe and wiry
Cossack. They rolled back and forth across the floor, tight in each
other’s arms, they broke table legs, they brought down crockery from the
shelves, they crashed into walls—and through all this the Cossack
little by little overcame the advantage which the other had held in the
beginning. First he twisted his legs in such fashion that he caught Pan
Kreutz’s body as if in a vise, a trick that he had learned in the old
days in the Ukraine, then he snapped his hands free from the other’s
grip and wound his arms in under his shoulders. Tighter and tighter he
drew arms and legs until the alchemist’s bones began to send out
cracking noises; then with a quick movement he had reversed their
positions and it was he who was on top and the alchemist underneath.
“Smash!” He had bumped the man’s head against the floor with all his
force, a blow sufficient to stun a giant, and in an instant had tossed
him against the wall.
There the alchemist lay.
Like a panther moving to attack, Peter seized the object which he had
come to procure, and leaped for the door.
He did not reach it unscathed. Pan Kreutz had also a last stratagem. It
was fortunate for him that when the Cossack bumped his head against the
floor, it was his mask that had borne the brunt of the blow—otherwise
it is doubtful if he could ever have risen. But when the Cossack tossed
him aside he lay there feigning unconsciousness, and as the other
turned, he reached with a swiftness as quick as Peter’s into a pocket of
his gown, where he had concealed a small package of explosive powder
which might be ignited only by concussion. A wonder it was indeed that
the powder had not exploded while they were wrestling on the floor.
This Pan Kreutz poised in his right hand as Peter made for the door. In
another second the man would be gone—the alchemist caught his balance
and hurled the package with all his strength.
It was a fair shot! It caught the Cossack with full force square on the
back of the head and burst with a loud report.
Those below, now already turning their attention to the noise and the
confusion on the second floor, heard the sharp explosion and saw the
court flooded with light. In the midst of the glare there came a shriek
that seemed to stir every corner of the courtyard, and almost
immediately a man with hair flaming and garments streaked with fire
sprang from the threshold of Pan Andrew’s lodging to the edge of the
stairway that had not collapsed, and darted to the floor above. He
stopped there only for one fleeting glance below. The court, blazing
with torches and alive with tumult, was full of figures—students,
watchmen, soldiers—so that escape that way was impossible. He leaped to
the loft stairway and mounted it. Clutching at the roof which was not
far above his head, he swung the low door back until it lay alongside
the house and then climbed over it to the roofing. Along this he rushed
like a meteor, his blazing hair streaming behind him in a trail of
sparks—he leaped to an adjoining roof, and then to another, until he
came to a place where the roofs sloped down to a wall, and there he was
seen last.
A hue and cry was set up, but the man had escaped. Some said that he ran
along the top of the wall and leaped into a monastery garden
beyond—others that he only pretended to descend and had crept back
among the housetops. At any rate he was not discovered.
When temporary stairs were finally put in place the watchmen released
Joseph and his mother from the small room in their own quarters where
they had lain bound, and brought Elzbietka down to them. Pan Kreutz, who
had retired to his loft where he shed his torn gown and his mask, was
bleeding and weak from his struggle and lost no time in getting into his
bed. It was thought by all that the robbers had carried away nothing,
but when Pan Andrew returned in the morning the house was searched
thoroughly only to find that the treasure was missing. Spectators swore
that Peter could not have carried anything with him when he made his
perilous escape over the roofs, and a few said that they had noticed
that his hands were empty.
However, hunt high or low as they did, the treasure was gone, and Pan
Andrew, in spite of the views of the spectators, was fully convinced
that the robber had stolen it.
Those of Peter’s band who had been injured in the fall of the stairs or
had been unable to escape from the court were taken to jail and
sentenced to various punishments. Several were put away into dungeons
where they could do no more harm, two were banished “for a period of
ninety-nine years,” and the rest were delivered to justice in other
towns where they had committed previous crimes. But the most vigorous
questioning could get no information from them, and it was concluded
that they knew little of the designs of the leader upon Pan Andrew. As
for Stas, his mother would have naught of him after this act of
treachery. She lost little time in turning him out of her house and
never would she receive him back again. It was heard some time later
that he had become a waiter in the Inn of the Golden Elephant, but after
the robbery of a guest there one night, he disappeared and was never
heard of in Krakow again.
Pan Kreutz, although somewhat unnerved by his share in the encounter,
met Pan Andrew in his lodging the next morning and described as fully as
he could the man who had been leader in the events of the preceding
night. He had scarcely finished when Pan Andrew sprang to his feet and
struck the back of his chair with his fist.
“It is as I thought,” he exclaimed fiercely, “the man who has assailed
me twice before. And now I know for a certainty that it is that half
Mongol, half Cossack that calls himself Bogdan and is known as the
Terrible throughout the Cossack lands. I have heard of his evil deeds
many times, as has every dweller in the Ukraine. And it would be like
him indeed to lead this villainy against me. He is a very devil, a man
without pity, though I will say a man of the boldest breed that God ever
benefited with the gift of breath. We, the Poles of the Ukraine, knew
him as Peter of the Button Face, because of the scar which you have seen
upon his right cheek, and by that scar I would doubtless have recognized
him on the morning when he attacked me outside the Krakow Gate, had I
not believed that he carried on his lawless deeds always nearer the
border.”
Thus saying he went sorrowfully to his work of repairing the damage done
by the Cossack band.