He jumped down to the platform and disappeared amidst the throng. The soldiers remained in the compartment, talking among themselves and getting into conversation with the two Khalinsk guards. One of the latter talked rather indiscreetly but A.J. did not think it wise to interfere.
After a few moments the little Jew returned, accompanied by another obvious Jew, taller and rather fine-looking. Without preamble he addressed himself to A.J.
“You are the Assistant-Commissar at Khalinsk?”
“Yes.”
“And this woman was formerly the Countess Marie Alexandra Adraxine?”
“Yes.”
“Then we cannot permit you to pass—either of you. In fact, you are both arrested.”
A.J. argued with sudden and rather startling vehemence: the central government wanted this woman; she was to supply evidence which would be wanted at a full-dress trial of all the counter-revolutionary ringleaders; there would be a tremendous row if some local Soviet were to interfere with such intentions. A.J. ended by an astute appeal to the men personally—“You two are doubtless ambitious—you would perhaps like to see yourselves in higher positions than a local Soviet? Do you think it will help you to countermand the orders of the central government? Whereas if, on the other hand—” It was pretty bluff, but he played it well, and the two Jews were reluctantly impressed. At last the man called Patroslav said something to his colleague in a language A.J. did not understand, and a lively and evidently acrimonious argument developed between them. Then Patroslav swung round on his heel and went off. The other Jew turned to A.J. “You are to be allowed to proceed with your prisoner,” he announced, with sullen insolence. “But your guards must return to Khalinsk—we will replace them by two others. And your prisoner will travel in a third-class compartment with the guards—we do not allow privileges of any kind to enemies of the Revolution. You yourself, being a government official, may remain here.”
“On the contrary, I shall go wherever the prisoner goes, since I am still in charge and responsible.”
“As you prefer.”
It was all, A.J. perceived, a scheme of petty annoyance, and on the whole he was glad to be escaping from Ekaterinburg with nothing worse. During the whole of the delay the woman had not spoken a word, but as they walked down the platform to change their compartment she said: “I am sorry, Commissar, to be inconveniencing you so much. If I give my parole not to escape, would you not prefer to stay in comfort where you were?”
“There is little difference in comfort between one place and another,” he answered.
But there was, for the third-class coaches were filthy and verminous, and there was neither time nor opportunity to make even the most perfunctory turnout.
The night had a brilliant moon, and the hills, seen through the windows of the train, upreared like heaving seas of silver. There was no light in the compartment save that of a candle-stump fixed in the neck of a bottle. The heavy bearded faces of the guards shone fiercely in the flickering light. They were Ukrainians and sometimes exchanged a few husky words in their local dialect. A.J. had a slight understanding of this, but the men talked so quietly that he could not catch more than a few words here and there.
Suddenly the train came to a jangling standstill, and after some delay a train official walked along the track with the information that a bridge had been blown up just ahead and that all passengers must walk on several miles to the next station, where another train would be waiting. A.J., his prisoner, and the two guards, climbed down to the track, which ran in a wide curve through densely wooded country. One of the guards declared that he knew the spot quite well, and that there was an easy short-cut to the station across country. A.J. doubtfully agreed and they set off along a wide pathway that met the railway at a tangent. They all walked in silence for a few minutes, with the voices of the other passengers still within hearing; but soon they were amongst tall pine- trees, and A.J. imagined, though he could not be certain, that the path was veering too far to the north. He said to the guards: “Are you quite sure that this is the way?”—and one of them answered: “Oh yes—you can hear the engine-whistle in the distance.” A.J. listened and could certainly hear it, but it sounded very remote.
They all walked on a little further, with the two guards chattering softly together in Ukrainian. A.J.’s acute sense of direction again warned him, and a somewhat similar feeling of apprehension must have seized on his prisoner, for she said “Don’t you think we should have done better to keep to the railway line?”
At last even the guards seemed to be undecided; they had been walking a little ahead and now stopped and began arguing together in excited undertones.
“Don’t you think it would have been better?” she repeated.
“Possibly,” he answered, in a whisper. “It was certainly foolish to let them lead us into this forest.”
“You think they have lost the way?”
“Maybe—or maybe not.”
“Ah,” she answered. “So you too are wondering?”
“Wondering what?”
“What they are chatting about so quietly.”
He said quickly: “I have a revolver. I am keeping a look- out.”
He was, in fact, beginning not to like the appearance of things at all. Had the two guards led them deliberately astray, and if so, with what intention? In the train he had heard them chattering together, but they could hardly have been plotting this particular piece of strategy since the blown-up railway bridge could not have been foreseen. Perhaps, however, the idea had come to one of them as a quick impromptu, a variant upon some less immediate scheme that they had had in mind.
One of the guards approached him with a measured deliberation which, in the moonlight, seemed peculiarly sinister. “If you will both wait here with me,” he began, “my friend says he will find out where we are and will come back to tell us.”
At first it seemed an innocent and reasonable suggestion, involving the somewhat lessened danger of being left alone with one possible enemy instead of two. But then A.J. recollected an ancient ruse that bandits sometimes played on their victims in Siberian forests; they said they were going away, but they did not really do so; they crept back and sprang on their enemies from behind. “No,” he answered, with sudden decision. “It doesn’t matter—we’ll go back to where we began and then walk along the track. I think I can remember the way.”
He began to walk in the reverse direction with the woman at his side and the two guards following him at a little distance. They seemed rather disconcerted by his decision, and continued to exchange remarks in whispers.
After a few moments A.J. said quietly to his companion: “I want you to be on your guard. I don’t trust those fellows.”
“Neither do I. What do you think their game is?”
“Robbery. Perhaps murder. This going back to the railway has upset their plans—I can gather that from the way they’re talking.”
“What can we do?”
“Nothing—except keep our heads. Have you good nerve?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“Then take this revolver and use it if necessary, but not otherwise.” He handed it to her quickly as they passed into the shadow of dark trees.
For the next few moments there came no sound except the crunch of four pairs of footsteps over the fir-cones. Neither A.J. nor the woman spoke, and the two guards also had ceased their whispered conversation.
A.J.’s eyes were searching ahead for any sign of the railway as well as preparing for any lightning emergency in the rear. The silence and darkness of the forest were both uncanny, and though he listened acutely for any repetition of that distant engine-whistle, he heard nothing. After walking for some ten minutes, by which time he estimated that the railway ought to have come into view, the track narrowed and began to twist uphill. He whispered suddenly: “I’ve lost my way.”