Knight Without Armour (12 page)

A.J. spent hours in his corner of the truck, watching through the slats
the constant procession of miles. He was half oblivious of those about him,
of babies who screamed and were sick, of women who moaned with hunger, of men
who chattered or quarrelled or were noisily companionable. In a similar way
he half noticed the changes that had taken place since he had last moved over
the scene—the extraordinary evidences of a new Siberia that had sprung
up ribbon-like along the thin line of the railway, the new factories and
freight-yards, the trams in the streets of Omsk, the steel bridges that had
replaced wooden ones.

The journey was tiring, but worse for others than for himself, for his
body, like his mind, seemed only capable of half-sensations. For years he had
been unaware of this, but now, in a world of men and women, he perceived and
was puzzled by it; he found himself doing things in a curious dream-like way,
as if part of him were asleep and were obeying the other part automatically.
Even when he talked, he heard his own voice as if it were another person
speaking; and when he felt tiredness, or hunger, or a physical ache, the
sensation came to him slowly, incompletely, almost at secondhand.

A fellow-exile tried to converse with him, but received little
encouragement. The man was an ex-university professor named
Tribourov—fat, pompous, and tremendously eager to reach Petrograd
because he knew many people in the government and felt sure of a good
appointment. He was also extremely annoyed that he had not been able to find
a place for himself and his wife in the second-or first-class coaches.
“Really, the government ought to arrange things better,” he
complained continually.

Madame Tribourov, a thin and rather delicate-looking woman, who had shared
the professor’s exile for five years, was suffering acutely from
illness and hunger; she could not eat any of the rough food that was the only
kind obtainable at wayside stations, and every day she grew weaker and nearer
to collapse. Tribourov himself, dreaming bureaucratic dreams, paid little
attention to her beyond an occasional word of perfunctory encouragement; she
would be all right, he kept saying, as soon as they reached the end of the
journey.

One morning the train stopped to load fuel in the midst of forest country,
far from any station or settlement, and some of the men, glad of the chance
to stretch their legs, climbed out of the trucks and walked about. A.J. and
Tribourov were together, and Tribourov, as usual, talked about himself and
his future importance and the iniquity of his having to travel in a cattle-
truck. His complaining increased when they had strolled along the track as
far as the dining-car and could sec its occupants talking, laughing, and
guzzling over an excellent lunch. Seen through the window from the
track-level, the dining-car presented a vista of large, munching jaws,
glittering epaulettes, and the necks of wine-bottles. One man was gnawing the
leg of a fowl, another was lifting champagne to his lips, another was puffing
at a cigar in full- stomached contentment. At the far end of the car was the
little kitchen- compartment where the food was cooked and stored; the window
was open and on the shelves could be seen rows of bottles as well as canned
foods, cheeses, and boxes of biscuits. “All that stuff comes from Japan
and America,” Tribourov explained. “They load it on board at
Vladivostok and it lasts all the way to Moscow and back. Excellently
organised, but the scandal is—” And he resumed his usual
complaint and continued until the engine-whistle warned them to hasten back
to their truck.

That night, when it was almost pitch-dark and his fellow-travellers were
mostly asleep or half-asleep, A.J. climbed out on to the footboard and began
to feel his way cautiously along the length of the train. His hands and mind
were functioning automatically; half of him was asking—’What on
earth are you doing?’—and the other half was
answering—’I am going to the dining-car to steal some food for
Madame Tribourov.’ He did not know why he was doing so; he cared
nothing at all for Madame Tribourov; it was no feeling of chivalry, or of
compassion, or of indignation. It was rather a chance idea that had entered
his half- mind—just an idea that loomed unwontedly large in a void
where there were no other ideas.

The train was travelling at a moderate speed—not more than twenty
miles an hour; the night was cloudy and the fringe of swamps to the side of
the track was only to be dimly perceived. Little could be done by eye as he
made his way from truck to truck; his hands groped for the slats and his feet
for the buffers between one truck and the next. It was not particularly
dangerous progress, provided one kept one’s nerve, and A.J. kept his
easily enough; or rather, in another sense, he had no nerves at all—he
was simply unaware of fear, terror, joy, triumph, and all other excitations.
His hands and feet did what was required of them, while his brain looked on
with mild incredulity.

Soon he reached the second-class coaches, in which candles were glimmering
in bottle-necks; and he could see the occupants asleep—wealthy traders,
bound on this business or that—well-dressed women, wives or mistresses
of high officials—a few military officers of lower rank. He passed them
all and then swung himself over the buffer-boards to the first-class coach,
which rolled along less noisily on well-greased bogies. Here the compartments
were well upholstered, lit by electricity, and provided with window-blinds.
Many of the latter were not drawn, however, and A.J. could see officers of
high rank, partially undressed, lying on the cushions with their mouths
gaping in obvious snores. The coach was not crowded; no compartment held more
than two occupants, and some only one. An especially luxurious coupé with a
large red star pasted on the windows contained a small table and a
comfortable couch on which a man sprawled in sleep. A military tunic hung on
a hook above his head, and in the far corner of the coupé there was a compact
lavatory-basin and water- tank. Such details fastened themselves with curious
intensity on A.J.’s mind as he made that slow hand-over-hand journey
from window to window. At last he passed on, over the last set of buffers, to
the object of his pilgrimage—the dining-car. It was a long, heavy
vehicle belonging to the international company, and at three in the morning
it was, naturally, deserted, with only a glimmer of light showing from the
further end where the attendants slept in their bunks. A.J. continued his way
along, but this final stage was more difficult because of the increasing
volley of sparks from the engine-chimney. When he reached the tiny kitchen
compartment he was quite prepared for a climb through the window, with all
the risks it involved of waking the attendants; but fate, at that last
moment, was unexpectedly kind. The window was still open, and rolls of white
bread, tins of American pork and beans, and wine-bottles lay so accessibly
that he could reach them merely by putting in a hand. He did so as quickly as
he could, filling his pockets, and then beginning the backward crawl by the
same route. It had taken him, he reckoned, twenty minutes to reach the
dining-car from the truck at the far end of the train, but he could not hope
to accomplish the return journey so quickly, for his hands were a little
numbed and his swollen pockets impeded movement.

He reached the first-class coach and swung himself on to it, but the
effort, employing a different set of muscles, made him wince; and when he
reached the footboard in safety he paused to regain strength. Suddenly he
realised that he was standing opposite the window of the coupé and that the
occupant of the couch was sitting up and staring at him. He began to move on
hurriedly, but before he could reach the next compartment the door of the
coupé was flung open and strong hands seized his wrists. It was impossible to
struggle; the slightest attempt to do so would have meant his falling
backwards to the track, and his arms, too, were aching after those successive
swings from coach to coach. At first he thought the man was trying to push
him off the train, but soon he realised that the intention was to drag him
inside the coupé. As he could not free himself and as to be dragged inside
was better than to be flung off, he yielded and the next minute found himself
sprawling on the couch with the door closed and the man above him flourishing
a revolver. He was a tall man with a trim beard and moustache and an
exceedingly good set of teeth; just now he was snarling with them and
punctuating his words with waves of the revolver. “So!” he cried
venomously. “You try to assassinate me, eh? You creep along by the
windows and shoot while I am asleep, perhaps, eh? Your friends in Omsk have
heard of my promotion and they send you to execute revenge, no doubt? But
instead, it is I who turn the tables, my friend! Now let me relieve you of
your weapons.” He felt in A.J.’s bulging pockets and pulled out,
not the revolver he had expected, but a bottle of wine. “So!” he
snarled, flinging it aside. “A little celebration after the deed, eh?
How disappointed your friends will be! And especially when they hear you have
been shot, also. For, mistake not, my friend, I will have you shot at the
next station. Assassin! Do you hear that?” He rapidly went through
A.J.’s other pockets, pulling out, to his increasing surprise, nothing
but long rolls of white bread, pieces of cheese, and tins of food.

All this time A.J. had not spoken a word, but now he judged it expedient
to confess nothing less than the simple truth. “You see I am not
armed,” he began. “I am not an assassin, and I had no intention
of making any attack on you. I have no friends at Omsk, and I did not even
know you were travelling on this train. I am an exile, returning to Russia,
and all I wanted was food. I took these things from the dining-car and was on
my way back with them to the truck in which I have been travelling from
Irkutsk.”

The other seemed scarcely mollified by this explanation. He obviously
believed it, but the revelation that he had been made to suffer such shock
and inconvenience by a mere petty pilferer angered him, if anything, more
than the idea of being assassinated. “A thief, indeed?” he cried
harshly. “You are only a thief, do you say? And you were only crawling
along in the middle of the night to steal food from the dining-car? Do you
know that the food is all required for high officers of the government? You
do, no doubt; but that did not deter you. Very well, you will find that the
penalty for thieving is just the same. We behave with fine impartiality, you
will find—thief or assassin, it does not matter—all face the
firing squad.”

“Some of the refugees in the trucks are starving,” said A.J.
slowly.

“Are they, indeed? Then let them starve. Why do they all want to
come crowding on the trains at a time like this? Let them starve—the
scum—the country could well manage with a few millions less of them.
And as for these things—after your dirty hands have touched them they
are clearly no use at all.” And with childish rage he began to pick
them up and throw them out of the window—first the bottle of wine, then
the rolls, then the cheese, and lastly the tins.

Something jerked forward in A.J.’s mind at that moment. As the other
stooped to pick up the last tin, he suddenly hurled himself at the sneering
face and flashing teeth, while his right hand caught hold of the revolver by
the barrel and twisted it back. A.J. was still in a dream, but it was a
different dream, a rising, billowing nightmare. He saw and heard the revolver
slip to the floor, and then he felt both his hands move to the red, mottled
neck in front of him; he saw the eyes bulge in terror and the snarl of the
teeth transfix into something glittering and rigid.

A moment later he stood by the side of the couch looking down upon its
curious occupant. There was no life now in the staring eyes and in the
twisted limbs.

All at once it occurred to him: he had killed the fellow. He had not
intended to—or
had
he? Yet no—there was hardly such a
thing as intention in him. It had just happened; the sight of the food
disappearing through the window had set up some unwonted electrical contact
between mind and body.

He tried to think what to do next, and his mind worked with icy clearness,
as in a vacuum. The dead man had clearly been a person of importance, and
that meant certain death for his slayer. Assuming, of course, that the latter
were discovered. But need he be? Was there a chance of escape? No one had
seen him so far; the blinds of the windows next to the corridor were drawn
and the corridor-door was fastened on the inside. He must, of course, hasten
back to the cattle-truck and feign sleep; his absence might or might not have
been particularly noticed, but perhaps he would be safe if he could return
unobtrusively. At the next station, he knew, there would be a huge commotion,
with probably the most minute examinations and cross-questionings of
everybody in the train.

He was just about to open the door of the coupe and begin a swift return
journey along the footboards, when he heard a tap at the corridor-door.
“Tarkarovsk in fifteen minutes’ time, sir,” came the voice
of the train-attendant. After a pause the message was repeated, and then A.J.
managed to stammer out “All right.” He heard the attendant move
away and tap at other doors along the corridor with the same
message—“Tarkarovsk in fifteen minutes’ time,
sir.”

And that, unfortunately, settled it. He could not return to the truck; it
had taken him twenty minutes to make the forward journey, and it was
impossible to think of doubling his rate on the way back. Besides, the train
attendant’s warning would waken the passengers in the compartments;
they would be sitting up and yawning, and would certainly see him if he
passed their windows. The only alternative seemed to be a risky jump off the
train and an escape across country, though his position would be desperate
enough even then. Tarkarovsk was dangerously near; the body would be
discovered quite soon; within an hour the surrounding country would be
swarming with armed searchers. Nor, among those open, desolate swamps, could
a fugitive hope to elude pursuers for long.