FOR LIFE OR DEATH.
No time had ever seemed so long to Colston as did the hour and a half
which passed after the departure of Soudeikin until his return. He
would have given anything to have accompanied him to the station, but
it would have been so very unwise to have incurred the risk of being
questioned, and perhaps obliged to show the passport that Soudeikin
was to use, that he controlled his impatience as best he could, and
let events take their course.
At length, when he had looked at his watch for the fiftieth time, and
found that it indicated nearly half-past eleven, there was a heavy
knock at the door. As it opened, Colston heard a rattle of arms and a
clinking of chains. Then there was a sound of gruff guttural voices
in the entrance-hall, and the next moment the door of the room was
thrown open, and Soudeikin walked in, followed by a young man in the
uniform of a lieutenant of the line, and after them came two
soldiers, to one of whom was handcuffed the Princess Ornovski, and to
the other Natasha.
Shocked as he was at the pitiable change that had taken place in the
appearance of the two prisoners since he had last seen them in
freedom, Colston was far too well trained in the school of conspiracy
to let the slightest sign of surprise or recognition escape him.
He and Ivan rose as the party entered, greeted Soudeikin and saluted
the officer, hardly glancing at the two pale, haggard women in their
rough grey shapeless gowns and hoods as they stood beside the men to
whom they were chained.
As the officer returned Colston's salute he turned to Soudeikin and
said civilly enough--
"I did not know you had another guest. I hope we shall not overcrowd
you."
"By no means," replied the commissioner, waving his hand toward
Colston as he spoke. "This is only my nephew, Ernst Vronski, who is
staying with me for a day or two on his way through to Nizhni
Novgorod with his furs, and that is his servant, Ivan Arkavitch. You
need 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 satisfy
you 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 you
will lead the way."
As the party left the room Colston caught one swift glance from
Natasha which told him that she understood his presence in the house
fully, and he felt that, despite her miserable position, he had an
ally in her who could be depended upon.
The officer carefully examined the room which had been provided for
the two prisoners, tried the heavy shutters with which the windows
were closed, and took from Soudeikin the keys of the padlocks to the
bars which ran across them. He then directed the prisoners to be
released from their handcuffs and locked them in the room, stationing
one of the soldiers at the door and sending the other to patrol the
back 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 in
two hours more they were to be relieved by a detachment from the
night patrol. This arrangement had been foreseen by Soudeikin, and it
had been settled that the rescue was to be attempted as soon as the
guard had been changed.
This would give the prisoners time to get a brief but much needed
rest after their long and miserable journey from Perm, penned up like
sheep in iron-barred cattle trucks, and it would leave the drowsiest
part of the night, from four o'clock to sunrise, for the hazardous
work in hand.
"That is a pretty girl you have there, captain," said Colston, as the
officer returned to the sitting-room. "Is she for the mines or
Sakhalin?"
"For Sakhalin by sentence, but as a matter of fact for neither, as
far as I can see."
"You mean that the Little Father will pardon her or give her a
lighter sentence, I suppose."
The officer grinned meaningly as he replied--
"_Nu vot!_ That is hardly likely. What I mean is that Captain
Kharkov, who is in command of the convict train from here, has had
instructions to convey her as comfortably as possible, and with no
more fatigue than is necessary, to Tchit, in the Trans-Baikal, and
that he is also charged with a letter from the Governor of Perm to
the Governor of Tchit.
"You know these gentlemen like to do each other a good turn when they
can, and so, putting two and two together, I should say that his
Excellency of Perm has concluded that our pretty prisoner will serve
to beguile the dulness of that Godforsaken hole in which his
Excellency of Tchit is probably dying of _ennui_. She will be more
comfortable there than at Sakhalin, and it is a lucky thing for her
that she has found favour in his Excellency's eyes."
Colston could have shot the fellow where he sat leering across the
table; but though his blood was at boiling point, he controlled
himself sufficiently to make a reply after the same fashion, and soon
after took his leave and retired for the night.
At four o'clock the guard was changed. The new officer, after taking
the keys, unlocked the door of the room in which Natasha and the
Princess were confined, and roused them up to satisfy himself that
they were still in safe keeping. It was a brutal formality, but
perfectly characteristic of Siberian officialism.
The man who had been on guard so far joined the patrol and returned
to the barracks, while the new officer made himself comfortable with
a bottle of brandy, with which Soudeikin had obligingly provided him,
in the sitting-room. It was a bitterly cold night, and he drank a
couple of glasses of it in quick succession. Ten minutes after he had
swallowed the second he rolled backwards on the couch on which he was
sitting and went fast asleep. A few moments later he had ceased to
breathe.
Then the door opened softly and Soudeikin and Colston slipped into
the room. The former shook him by the shoulder. His eyes remained
half closed, his head lolled loosely from side to side, and his arms
hung heavily downwards.
"He's gone," whispered Soudeikin; and, without another word, they set
to work to strip the uniform off the lifeless body. Then Colston
dressed himself in it and gave his own clothes to Soudeikin.
As soon as the change was effected, Colston took the keys and went to
the door at which the sentry was keeping guard. The man was already
half asleep, and blinked at him with drowsy eyes as he challenged
him. For all answer the Terrorist levelled his pistol at his head and
fired. There was a sharp crack that could hardly have been heard on
the other side of the wall, and the man tumbled down with a bullet
through his brain.
Colston stepped over the corpse, unlocked the door, and found Natasha
and the Princess already dressed in male attire as two peasant boys,
with sheepskin coats and shapkas, and wide trousers tucked into their
half boots. These disguises had been provided beforehand by
Soudeikin, 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 in
the 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 thumb
towards the sitting-room.
Soudeikin nodded in reply, and the five left the house by the back
door.
It was then after half-past four. Fortunately it was a dark cloudy
morning, and the streets of the town were utterly deserted. By ones
and twos they stole through the by-streets and lanes without meeting
a soul, until Soudeikin at length stopped at a house on the eastern
edge of the town about a mile from the Tobolsk road.
He tapped at one of the windows. The door was softly opened by an
invisible hand, and they entered and passed through a dark passage
and out into a stable-yard behind the house. Under a shed they found
a troika, or three-horse sleigh, with the horses ready harnessed, in
charge of a man dressed as a mujik.
They got in without a word, all but Soudeikin, who went to the
horses' heads, while the other man went and opened the gates of the
yard. The bells had been removed from the harness, and the horses'
feet made no sound as Soudeikin led them out through the gate. Ivan
took the reins, and Colston held out his hand from the sleigh. There
was a roll of notes in it, and as he gave it to Soudeikin he
whispered--
"Farewell! If we succeed, the Master shall know how well you have
done your part."
Soudeikin took the money with a salute and a whispered farewell, and
Ivan trotted his horses quietly down the lane and swung round into
the road at the end of it.
So far all had gone well, but the supreme moment of peril had yet to
come. A mile away down the road was the guard-house on the Tobolsk
road leading out of the town, and this had to be passed before there
was even a chance of safety.
As there was no hope of getting the sleigh past unobserved, Colston
had determined to trust to a rush when the moment came. He had given
Natasha and the Princess a magazine pistol apiece, and held a brace
in his own hands; so among them they had a hundred shots.
Ivan kept his horses at an easy trot till they were within a hundred
yards of the guard-house. Then, at a sign from Colston, he suddenly
lashed them into a gallop, and the sleigh dashed forward at a
headlong speed, swept round the curve past the guard-house, hurling
one of the sentries on guard to the earth, and away out on to the
Tobolsk road.
The next instant the notes of a bugle rang out clear and shrill just
as another sounded from the other end of the town. Colston at once
guessed what had happened. The inspector of the patrols, in going his
rounds, had called at Soudeikin's house to see if all was right, and
had discovered the tragedy that had taken place. He looked back and
saw a body of Cossacks galloping down the main street towards the
guard-house, waving their lanterns and brandishing their spears above
their heads.
"Whip up, Ivan, they will be on us in a couple of minutes!" he cried
and Ivan swung his long whip out over his horses' ears, and shouted
at them till they put their heads down and tore over the smooth snow
in gallant style.
By the time the race for life or death really began they had a good
mile start, and as they had only four more to go Ivan did not spare
his cattle, but plied whip and voice with a will till the trees
whirled past in a continuous dark line, and the sleigh seemed to fly
over the snow almost without touching it.
Still the Cossacks gained on them yard by yard, till at the end of
the fourth mile they were less than three hundred yards behind. Then
Colston leant over the back of the sleigh, and taking the best aim he
could, sent half a dozen shots among them. He saw a couple of the
flying figures reel and fall, but their comrades galloped heedlessly
over them, yelling wildly at the tops of their voices, and every
moment lessening the distance between themselves and the sleigh.
Colston fired a dozen more shots into them, and had the satisfaction
of seeing three or four of them roll into the snow. At the same time
he put a whistle to his lips, and blew a long shrill call that
sounded 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 firing
rapidly at the Cossacks. Shot after shot told either upon man or
beast, for the daughter of Natas was one of the best shots in the
Brotherhood; but before she had fired a dozen times a bright gleam of
white light shot downwards over the trees, apparently from the
clouds, full in the faces of their pursuers.
Involuntarily they reined up like one man, and their yells of fury
changed in an instant into a general cry of terror. The Cossacks are
as brave as any soldiers on earth, and they can fight any mortal foe
like the fiends that they are, but here was an enemy they had never
seen before, a strange, white, ghostly-looking thing that floated in
the clouds and glared at them with a great blazing, blinding eye,
dazzling them and making their horses plunge and rear like things
possessed.
They were not long left in doubt as to the intentions of their new
enemy. Something came rushing through the air and struck the ground
almost at the feet of their first rank. Then there was a flash of
green light, a stunning report, and men and horses were rent into
fragments and hurled into the air like dead leaves before a
hurricane.
Only three or four who had turned tail at once were left alive; and
these, without daring to look behind them, drove their spurs into
their horses' flanks and galloped back to Tiumen, half mad with
terror, to tell how a demon had come down from the skies, annihilated
their comrades, and carried the fugitives away into the clouds upon
its back.
When they reached the town it was a scene of the utmost panic.
Soldiers were galloping and running hither and thither, bugles were
sounding, and the whole population were turning out into the
snow-covered streets. On every lip there were only two
words--"Natas!" "The Terrorists!"
The death sentence on Soudeikin, the sub-commissioner of police, had
been found pinned with a dagger to the table in the room in which lay
the 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 a
bullet-hole clean through his head from front to back, while in the
snow under one of the windows of the room lay the body of the other
sentry, stabbed through the heart.
From the very midst of one of the strongholds of Russian tyranny in
Siberia, two important prisoners and a police official had been
spirited away as though by magic, and now upon the top of all the
wonder and dismay came the fugitive Cossacks with their wild tale
about the air-demon that had swooped down and destroyed their troop
at a single blow. To crown all, half an hour later three horses, mad
with fear, came galloping up the Tobolsk road, dragging behind them
an empty sleigh, to one of the seats of which was pinned a scrap of
paper on which was written--
"The daughter of Natas sends greeting to the Governor of Tiumen, and
thanks him for his hospitality."