The Dark Frontier (21 page)

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Who are you?”

I told him.

“You’re a very foolish man, Mr. Casey. I think I ought to explain, if you entertain any doubts on the subject, that if you do not tell me what you have done with those papers you will be shot dead inside five minutes.”

His florid face had lost none of its benignity as he uttered the threat. He was smiling slightly, not very pleasantly, but smiling. Only a faint twitching of the muscles at the side of his mouth and a deadly quality in his eyes betrayed the fact that he was very much in earnest. My spine crept.

“Look here,” I said hastily, “I haven’t got your papers, they were put back in the safe.”

“The copies then, please, Mr. Casey.”

“There are no copies.”

He shook his head impatiently and his fleshy cheeks quivered grotesquely. “Bluff, Mr. Casey, will do you no good,” he said and his voice had become curiously husky. “I am going to count five,” he said, suddenly dropping into French. “If you haven’t told me by then I shall know one of two things; either that you really do not know or that you are a fool. In either case, Nikolai will shoot you. You hear, Nikolai?”

The Greek’s wet lips opened a little, showing his gums. I saw the muzzle of the silencer drop slightly until it was pointing at my stomach. Groom glanced sideways at him.

“No, Nikolai,” he said, “not the stomach. He will scream and that will attract attention.”

The gun tilted a few degrees.

“
Un
,” said Groom.

“You won’t get away with this.”

“
Deux
.”

“They hang murderers in Ixania, don’t they?”

“
Trois
.”

I was silent.

“
Quatre
.”

He paused a little longer. I saw Nikolai’s forearm bracing to take the recoil. I bit my lip to stop my mouth trembling. Then, with a click, the lights went out.

As I hurled myself sideways, I saw the flash and heard the sharp thud of the silenced gun. I sprawled on the floor. There was the sound of a scuffle, a cry of pain and the lights were up again. Standing with his back to the door, automatic in hand, was Carruthers. Facing him were Groom and Nikolai, the latter holding his wounded arm. I scrambled to my feet.

“See if Groom has a gun,” said Carruthers curtly.

I found a small Belgian six-shot automatic in Groom’s breast pocket. Nikolai gave a howl of agony when I touched him, but I took no notice. There was only an empty holster under his arm, but in his pocket I found twenty pounds in
English notes which I took. Carruthers did not take his eyes off the pair.

“His gun’s on the floor behind you,” he said. “Put it in your pocket.”

I obeyed. Carruthers smiled at Groom who was staring at him, a puzzled look on his face.

“I find this behaviour a little odd, Professor,” he said at last. He indicated the panic-stricken Nikolai. “This gentleman and I discovered this man,” he nodded at me, “burgling your room.”

“I told him to,” answered Carruthers grimly.

“Ah, in that case,” said Groom, “there’s nothing more to be said.” He took a step towards the door.

“Stop where you are,” snapped Carruthers.

Groom stopped. “Certainly,” he said mildly. “But I do wish you would point that pistol somewhere else. They go off so easily if one isn’t used to them.”

“That, Mr. Groom, will be unfortunate for you.”

The lips of the other man curved in a genuine smile.

“You know, Professor,” he said slowly, “I think I must be getting old. This is the second time that I have made a mistake about you.” A sudden thought seemed to strike him. “You are, I suppose—er—Professor Barstow?”

Carruthers grinned. Groom’s eyes hardened.

“I shall not make a third mistake,” he said.

“No, you won’t,” said Carruthers, “because I’m going to shoot you. Give me the gun you picked up, Casey—the one with the silencer.”

“But …” I began.

“Give it to me. Wait. See if it’s loaded first.”

It was loaded and I handed it over. I saw him level it, then I looked at Groom. A change had come over him. The round, genial, florid face had turned a dirty grey. The plump cheeks had fallen in. The lower lip trembled as though he were striving
to say something. Suddenly he turned away with a choking sound, retched and vomited. Carruthers looked at him for a moment, then raised his arm again. Nikolai went down on his knees. I turned away, but no shot came. I felt a touch on my arm.

“Come on, let’s get out of this,” said Carruthers.

We went. I felt a trifle shaky. We reached the street without meeting a soul.

“How did you get in with the key in my pocket?” I asked him.

“Took the master key from the night porter’s office. As I told you, he’s never there when he should be.”

I said nothing. We walked on, our feet echoing on the deserted pavements. After a while I said: “Lucky for me you jumped to what was happening when I didn’t come down. Thanks a lot.”

“I didn’t wait for that. As soon as I knew that the room had been searched I realised that they’d be waiting for me to come back. Naturally, Groom thought I’d taken the Kassen papers for myself. I heard the last part of your conversation through the keyhole.” He paused, then added irrelevantly: “Groom’s a strange man, isn’t he?”

“Hm. Do you think he meant to shoot me?”

“Of course he did.”

“Why didn’t you shoot him?”

“I found I couldn’t do it.” He sounded more surprised than ashamed.

We came at last to the Sa’ Maria prospek, where we halted. I gave him the money I had retrieved from Nikolai and then fished Groom’s gun out of my pocket. He shook his head.

“You may need it,” he said; “it’s best to be prepared.”

I pocketed the automatic with a sigh. The transition from newspaper man to desperado is a more arduous process than some people would have you believe.

• • •

It was ten days before I saw Carruthers again. The day after our encounter with Groom, the pink-eyed officer from the Countess called and cross-examined me in his ludicrous French concerning Carruthers’ whereabouts; but I denied all knowledge of him and, after a last threatening “
Où se trouve cet homme, Barstof?
” he departed with an ominous promise to return. I was, however, in touch with the affairs of the Young Peasants’ Party. It had been arranged that Beker should telephone to me every day at different times and from different public booths. With the likelihood of my telephone being tapped, our conversations were necessarily non-committal, but I gathered that everything was going according to plan—Carruthers’ plan—and that developments might soon be expected. Of the Countess and Marassin, I heard nothing. I must confess that I felt a trifle out of it. The events of the past few days had accustomed me to dramatic action. The uneventful backwater in which I now found myself, beyond allowing me to make up some arrears of sleep, held no attractions for me. There was, besides, little information that I was able to pass on to the Young Peasants, and I suspected that Toumachin was keeping me wrapped in cellophane and out of the way while his plans matured. He was probably right for at that time I was endeavouring to restore my self-respect by cabling guarded reports to New York. They were, under the circumstances, useless pieces of work and I was not surprised to receive an urgent cable demanding, in effect, to know what I thought I was playing at. I was in a difficulty here. To cable back that I was waiting for a revolution to break was out. There was certain to be a censor at work. I thought round the problem a bit and then sent a message which would, I hoped, look dumb enough to be cryptic. It ran:

The next day I received a reply. It was encouraging.

I considered the sentence and decided that it was a request for information concerning the projected New York loan. I sent the following reply:

The reply from New York was quietly encouraging.

For the next two days I went about in a much more buoyant frame of mind. I even went so far as to seek the promised interview with the Countess on the subject of the Eastern Pact, but was told that she was away. I was seen instead by Prince Ladislaus. He was, I decided, one of those dumbbells who made a uniform look good and no more. If the Countess had been in the vicinity he would not, I felt, have dared to open his mouth. As it was, he sat me in a chair and talked pompous inanities at me for an hour and a half. I was thankful when it was over.

A further two days doing nothing, however, soon made me long even for an interview with the Prince. I spent most of the time when I wasn’t waiting for Beker’s telephone calls sitting in cafés reading back numbers of
Time
forwarded by the
Tribune
man in Bucharest. I was thus engaged one afternoon when a man sat down beside me. I turned and recognised Beker. I was surprised to see him and said so as I returned his greeting.

“No, Monsieur Casey,” he replied, “they do not know me yet. I am from the country. I have not been in Zovgorod for
long. You see,” he added, his grim little face stretching into a grin, “I used to have a beard.”

“How’s Barstow?” I asked.

His eyes lighted up. I listened to a long panegyric on the “Professor’s” virtues, his organising ability, his tactical brilliance and his ingenuity. Toumachin, Beker said without a hint of jealousy, had taken the Professor to his heart. Suddenly Beker seemed to become embarrassed and hesitated a little. I waited. Then he went on, choosing his words carefully.

“The Professor, your friend, Monsieur, he is inclined, perhaps, to the macabre in his tastes?”

I would have believed anything of Carruthers, but I asked him what he meant. He became more self-conscious than ever and went on yet more hesitantly.

“He carries a picture postcard of the Countess Schverzinski in his pocket. Now that, Monsieur, is
drôle
, for he cannot but hate her as do we all.”

I remembered Carruthers’ sentimental outburst on the night of the robbery.

“It may be,” I suggested, “to remind him of his hatred.”

He shook his head solemnly and explained. I cannot remember the exact words he used, but the picture they conjured up was vivid. Carruthers, it seemed, would spend hours at a time gazing at the postcard in an unmistakably sentimental fashion. In Beker’s philosophy only one conceivable construction could be placed upon this phenomenon. Carruthers, according to him, was perversely attracted to the Countess. He discoursed at length on the implications of such an affair. “Macabre,” I decided, was a mild word for him to have used when I had heard in detail the conclusions that he and Toumachin had reached. He inquired anxiously if I thought he was right. I said that it was a likely solution and he seemed relieved. The curious sense of unreality that I had experienced in my contacts with Carruthers had evidently
been felt by Beker and Toumachin. It had worried them and they had immediately rationalised it in their own characteristic fashion. But I thought then, and for that matter do so still, that Carruthers had in him a curious streak of pure adolescence. He was like a schoolboy not yet quite grown out of his Red Indian games and suffering his first attack of calf-love; though, even as I write it, the description seems entirely inadequate and even disloyal to a man who was many things by turns, none of them measurable against ordinary standards of adult male behaviour, all of them intensely human. In Beker’s eyes he is a great man. In my eyes he remains—Carruthers.

Beker had news for me. The peasants in the outlying towns were ready to put the great plan into operation, though what exactly this plan now involved he would not say. I knew the bare outlines of it but, according to Beker, Carruthers had revised many of his ideas and it was now quite a complicated though, I was assured, infallible piece of mechanism. Zero hour, he said, would be very, very soon now. He left me soon after with vehement assurances that I would be called in the moment the ball opened. I went so far as to send a cable to New York:

I felt slightly foolish then. If the whole thing fell flat I would be a joke.

I have written elsewhere and at length on the subject of the Ixanian revolution, of the political situation that led up to it and of the dramatic twenty-four hours in which the peasants’ coup d’état was effected. But of the curious atmosphere which preceded the storm I have said nothing. Such tenuous abstractions are frowned upon, unwisely I think, by the students and politicians. These persons seem to think that revolutions can be foisted upon unsuspecting publics like new armament programmes or secret alliances. I do not believe that there was a
man or woman in Zovgorod, with the exception of the members of the Government, during the week preceding the Young Peasants’ bid for power who did not feel that there was something in the wind. Few actually knew anything—which was just as well, for the Countess’s intelligence people were not stupid—but those hot sunny days brooded over a city in suspense, a city in which cafés emptied early and shutters were closed. If the Countess and her friends had not held themselves so aloof from the people, they could not have failed to sense the popular uneasiness.

On May the third I went for my usual morning walk along the Kudbek. As soon as I had left the hotel I had sensed that something was happening. By the time I reached the Kudbek I knew it for a fact. Groups of people were standing about in breathless and, I thought, somewhat furtive conversation. Anxious glances were being cast. The ordinary babble of conversation in the cafés had changed to a low hum. Clearly there was something to talk about. The police, of whom there was an unusual number in the streets, seemed nervous. I saw a man arrested for bumping into a policeman as he hurried along the sidewalk. I bought a paper. It told me nothing. I asked the waiter at the café what it was all about and he pretended not to understand. Half an hour later a troop of cavalry clattered past heading for the Chamber of Deputies. There were one or two faint
Bravas
, but that was all.