"Driving a cab?" The general finished the sentence. "Because, my friend, I am human. I must eat, for example; I must have a room to sleep in. I need cigarettes, and clean shirts at least three times a week--for G.o.d"s sake never let that be known. I must also have warm clothes for the winter--in fact, I must live."
"But haven"t you--money?" Malcolm felt all a decent man"s embarra.s.sment.
"Forgive me b.u.t.ting into your affairs, but naturally I"m rather hazed."
"Naturally," laughed the general. "A bottle of kava.s.s, my peach of Turkistan, and a gla.s.s for our comrade."
"Long live the Revolution!" wheezed the waitress mechanically.
"Long may it live, little mother!" responded the general.
When the girl had gone he squared round to his companion.
"I have no shame, Mr. Hay--I"m going to let you pay for your own dinner because I cannot in these democratic times pauperize you by paying for you. No, I have no money. My balance in the State bank has been confiscated to the sacred cause of the people. My estate, a hundred versts or so from Moscow, confiscated to the sacred cause of the Revolution, my house in Petrograd is commandeered to the sacred service of the Soviet."
"But your command?"
The general did not smile now. He laid down his knife and fork and threw a glance behind him.
"The men began shooting their officers in March, 1917," he said, lowering his voice. "They executed the divisional staff in May--the democratic spirit was of slow growth. They spared me because I had written a book in my youth urging popular government and had been confined in the fortess of Vilna for my crime. When the army was disbanded I came to Moscow, and the cab was given to me by a former groom of mine, one Isaac Mosservitch, who is now a judge of the high court and dispenses pretty good law, though he cannot sign his own name."
"Mr. Hay," he went on earnestly, "you did wrong to come to Moscow. Get back to Kieff and strike down into the Caucasus. You can reach the American posts outside of Tiflis. You"ll never leave Russia. The Bolsheviks have gone mad--blood-mad, murder-mad. Every foreigner is suspect. The Americans and the English are being arrested. I can get you a pa.s.sport that will carry you to Odessa, and you can reach Batoum, and Baku from there."
Malcolm leant back in his chair and looked thoughtfully at the other.
"Is it so bad?"
"Bad! Moscow is a mad-house. Listen--do you hear anything?"
Above the hum of conversation Malcolm caught a sound like the cracking of whips.
"Rifle-firing," said the general calmly. "There"s a counter-revolution in progress. The advanced Anarchists are in revolt against the Bolsheviks. There is a counter-revolution every morning. We cab-drivers meet after breakfast each day and decide amongst ourselves which of the streets shall be avoided. We are pretty well informed--Prince Dalgoursky, who was a captain in the Preopojensky Guard, sells newspapers outside the Soviet headquarters, and the comrades give him tips. One of these days the comrades will shoot him, but for the moment he is in favour, and makes as much as a hundred roubles a day."
The waitress came to the table, and the conversation momentarily ceased.
When she had gone Malcolm put the question which he had asked so often in the past four years.
"Can you give me any news of the Grand Duke Yaroslav?"
The other shook his head.
"His Highness was in Petrograd when I heard of him last."
"And--and his daughter? She has been with the Russian Red Cross on the Riga front, I know."
The bearded man shot a queer glance at his companion.
"In what circ.u.mstances did you see her last?" he asked.
Malcolm hesitated.
He could hardly tell a stranger of that tragic scene which was enacted in his bedroom. From the moment she had fled through the door he had not set eyes upon her. In the morning when he had wakened, feeling sick and ill, he had been told that the Grand Duke and his daughter had left by the early northern express for the capital. Of Boolba, that hideously blinded figure, he heard nothing. When he inquired for Israel Kensky, men shrugged and said that he had "disappeared." His house was closed and the old man might be in prison or in hiding. Later he was to learn that Kensky had reappeared in Moscow, apparently without hindrance from the authorities. As for Boolba, he had kept his counsel.
"You seem embarra.s.sed," smiled Malinkoff. "I will tell you why I ask.
You know that her Grand Ducal Highness was banished from Court for disobedience to the royal will?"
Malcolm shook his head.
"I know nothing--absolutely nothing. Kieff and Odessa are full of refugees and rumours, but one is as much a suspect as the other."
"She would not marry--that is all. I forget the name of the exalted personage who was chosen for her, though I once helped to carry him up to bed--he drank heavily even in those days. G.o.d rest him! He died like a man. They hung him in a sack in Peter and Paul, and he insulted the Soviets to the last!"
"So--so she is not married?"
The general was silent, beckoning the waitress.
"My little dear," he said, "what shall I pay you?"
She gave him the scores and they settled.
"Which way now?" asked the general.
"I hardly know--what must a stranger do before he takes up his abode?"
"First find an abode," said the general with a meaning smile. "You asked me to drive you to the Hotel Bazar Slav, my simple but misguided friend!
That is a Soviet headquarters. You will certainly go to a place adjacent to the hotel to register yourself, and afterwards to the Commissary to register all over again, and, if you are regarded with approval, which is hardly likely, you will be given a ticket which will enable you to secure the necessities of life--the tickets are easier to get than the food."
The first call at the house near the Bazar Slav gave them neither trouble nor results. The Soviet headquarters was mainly concerned with purely administrative affairs, and the organization of its membership.
Its corridors and doorway were crowded with soldiers wearing the familiar red armlet, and when Malinkoff secured an interview with a weary looking and unkempt official, who sat collarless in his shirt sleeves at a table covered with papers, that gentleman could do no more than lean back in his chair and curse the interrupters volubly.
"We might have dispensed with the headquarters visit," said Malinkoff, "but it is absolutely necessary that you should see the Commissary unless you want to be pulled out of your bed one night and shot before you"re thoroughly awake. By the way, we have an interesting American in gaol--by his description I gather he is what you would call a gun-man."
Malcolm stared.
"Here--a gun-man?"
Malinkoff nodded.
"He held up the Treasurer-General of the Soviet and relieved him of his wealth. I would like to have met him--but I presume he is dead. Justice is swift in Moscow, especially for those who hold up the officials of the Revolution."
"What sort of justice do these people administer?" asked Malcolm curiously.
Malinkoff shrugged his padded shoulders.
"Sometimes I think that the very habit of justice is dead in this land,"
he said. "On the whole they are about as just and fair as was the old regime--that is not saying much, is it? The cruelty of our rule to-day is due rather to ignorance than to ill will. A few of the men higher up are working off their old grievances and are profiting enormously, but the rank and file of the movement are labouring for the millennium."
"I think they"re mad," said Malcolm.
"All injustice is mad," replied Malinkoff philosophically. "Now get into my little cab, and I will drive you to the Commissary."