Knight Without Armour (7 page)

At the end of the fortnight, by which time A.J.’s face had begun to
give him a remarkably different appearance, Forrester again photographed him,
and a few days later handed him his new passport and papers of identity. It
gave him a shock, at first, to see himself so confidently described as
‘Peter Vasilevitch Ouranov,’ born at such and such a place and on
such and such a date. “You must get used to thinking of yourself by
that name,” Forrester told him. “And you must also make it your
business to know something about your own past life. Your parents, of course,
are both dead. You have just a little money of your own—enough to save
you from having to work for a living you are a studious, well-educated
person, at present engaged in writing a book about—what shall we
say?—something, perhaps, with a slightly subversive
flavour—political economy, perhaps, or moral philosophy. Oh, by the
way, you may permit yourself to know a little French and German—as
much, in fact, as you
do
know. But not a word of English. Remember
that most of all.”

The next morning A.J. was made to change into a completely different
outfit of clothes. He was also given three hundred roubles in cash, a small
trunk-key, and a luggage ticket issued at the Moscow station. After breakfast
he said good-bye to Forrester and Stanfield, walked from their apartment to
the station, presented his ticket, received in exchange a large portmanteau,
and drove in a cab to an address Forrester had given him. It was a block of
middle- class apartments on the southern fringe of the city. There chanced
(or was it chance?) to be an apartment vacant; he interviewed the porter,
came to terms, produced his papers for registration, and took up his abode in
a comfortable set of rooms on the third floor. There he unlocked the
portmanteau, and found it contained clothes, a few Russian books, a brass
samovar, and several boxes of a popular brand of Russian cigarettes. These
miscellaneous and well-chosen contents rather amused him.

Thus he began life under the new name. He was startled, after a few days,
to find how easy it was to assume a fresh identity; he conscientiously tried
to forget all about Ainsley Jergwin Fothergill and to remember only Peter
Vasilevitch Ouranov, and soon the transference came to require surprisingly
little effort. Forrester had cautioned him not to be in any great hurry to
begin his real work, so at first he merely made small purchases at the
bookshop whose address he had been given, without attempting to get to know
anyone. Gradually, however, the youthful, studious-looking fellow who bought
text-books on economic history (that was the subject finally fixed on)
attracted the attention of the bookseller, a small swarthy Jew of
considerable charm and culture. His name was Axelstein. A.J. had all along
decided that, if possible, he would allow the first move to be made by the
other side, and he was pleased when, one afternoon during the slack hours of
business, Axelstein began a conversation with him. Both men were exceedingly
cautious and only after a longish talk permitted it to be surmised that they
were neither of them passionate supporters of the Government. Subsequent
talks made the matter less vague, and in the end it all happened much as
Forrester had foreshadowed—A.J. was introduced to several other
frequenters of the shop, and it was tacitly assumed that he was a most
promising recruit to the movement.

A few days later he was admitted to a club to which Axelstein and many of
his customers belonged. It met in an underground beer-hall near the Finland
station. Over a hundred men and women crowded themselves into the small,
unventilated room, whose atmosphere was soon thick with the mingled fumes of
beer, makhorka tobacco, and human bodies. Some of the men were
factory-workers with hands and clothes still greasy from the machines. Others
belonged to the bourgeois and semi-intelligentsia—clerks in government
offices, school teachers, book-keepers, and so on. A few others were
university students. Of the women, some were factory-workers, some
stenographers, but most were just the wives of the men.

A.J. allowed himself to make several friends in that underground beer-
hall, and the reality of its companionship together with the secrecy and
danger of the meeting, made a considerable impression on him. Often news was
received that one or another member had been arrested and imprisoned without
trial. Police spies were everywhere; there was even the possibility, known to
all, that some of the members might themselves be spies or agents
provocateurs. Caution was the universal and necessary watchword, and at any
moment during their sessions members were ready to transform themselves into
a haphazard and harmless group of beer-drinking and card-playing
roisterers.

It was only by degrees that A.J. came to realise the immensity of the tide
that was flowing towards revolution. That club was only one of hundreds in
Petersburg alone, and Petersburg was only one of scores of Russian cities in
which such clubs existed. The movement was like a great subterranean octopus
stirring ever more restlessly beneath the foundations of imperial government.
An arm cut off here or there had absolutely no effect; if a hundred men were
deported to Siberia a hundred others were ready to step instantly into the
vacant places. Everything was carefully and skilfully organised, and there
seemed to be no lack of money. The Government always declared that it came
from the Japanese, but Axelstein hinted that most of it derived from big
Jewish banking and industrial interests.

A.J. became rather friendly with an eighteen-year-old university student
named Maronin. He was fair-haired, large-eyed, and delicate-looking, with
thin, artistic hands (he was a fine pianist) and slender nostrils; his father
had been a lawyer in Kieff. The boy did no real work at the university and
had no particular profession in view; he lived every moment for the
revolution he believed to be coming. A.J. found that this intense and
passionate attitude occasioned no surprise amongst the others, though, of
course, it was hardly typical.

Young Alexis Maronin interested A.J. a great deal. He was such a kindly,
jolly, amusing boy—in England A.J. could have imagined him a popular
member of the sixth-form. In Russia, however, he was already a man, and with
more than an average man’s responsibilities, since he had volunteered
for any task, however dangerous, that the revolutionary organisers would
allot him. Axelstein explained that this probably meant that he would be
chosen for the next ‘decisive action’ whenever that should take
place. “He is just the type,” Axelstein explained calmly.
“Throwing a bomb accurately when you know that the next moment you will
be torn to pieces requires a certain quality of nerve which, as a rule, only
youngsters possess.”

Regularly every week A.J. transmitted his secret reports and received his
regular payments by a routine so complicated and devious that it seemed to
preclude all possibility of discovery. He found his work extremely
interesting, and his new companions so friendly and agreeable, on the whole,
that he was especially glad that his spying activities were not directed
against them. He was well satisfied to remain personally impartial, observing
with increasing interest both sides of the worsening situation.

One afternoon he was walking with Maronin through a factory district
during a lock-out; crowds of factory workers—men, women, and
girls—were strolling or loitering about quite peaceably. Suddenly, with
loud shouts and the clatter of hoofs, a troop of Cossacks swept round the
street-corner, their lithe bodies swaying rhythmically from side to side as
they laid about them with their short, leaden-tipped whips. The crowd
screamed and stampeded for safety, but most were hemmed in between the
Cossacks and the closed factory-gates. A.J. and Maronin pressed themselves
against the wall and trusted to luck; several horsemen flashed past; whips
cracked and there were terrifying screams; then all was over, almost as
sharply as it had begun. A girl standing next to Maronin had been struck; the
whip had laid open her cheek from lip to ear. A.J. and Maronin helped to
carry her into a neighbouring shop, which was already full of bleeding
victims. Maronin said: “My mother was blinded like that—by a
Cossack whip,”—and A.J. suddenly felt as he had done years before
when he had decided to fight Smalljohn’s system at Barrowhurst, and
when he had seen the policeman in Trafalgar Square twisting the
suffragette’s arm—only a thousand times more intensely.

Throughout the summer he went on making his reports, attending meetings,
arguing with Axelstein, and cultivating friendship with the boy Alexis. There
was something very pure and winsome about the latter—the power of his
single burning ideal gave him an air of otherworldliness, even in his most
natural and boyish moments. His hatred of the entire governmental system was
terrible in its sheer simplicity; it was the system he was pledged against;
mere individuals, so far as they were obeying orders, roused in him only
friendliness and pity. The Cossack guards who had slashed the crowd with
their whips were to him as much victims as the crowd itself, and even the
Emperor, he was ready to admit, was probably a quite harmless and decent
fellow personally. The real enemy was the framework of society from top to
bottom, and in attacking that enemy, it might and probably would happen that
the innocent would have to suffer. Thus he justified assassinations of
prominent officials; as human beings they were guiltless and to be pitied,
but as cogs in the detested machine there could be no mercy for them.

About midnight one October evening A.J. was reading in his sitting-room
and thinking of going to bed when the porter tapped at his door with the
message that a young man wished to see him. Such late visits were against
police regulations, but the chance of a good tip had doubtless weighed more
powerfully in the balance. A.J. nodded, and the porter immediately ushered in
Maronin, who had been standing behind him in the shadow of the landing.

As soon as the door had closed and the two were alone together A.J. could
see that something was wrong. The boy’s face was milky pale and his
eyes stared fixedly; he was also holding his hand against his chest in a
rather peculiar way. “What on earth’s the matter?” A.J.
enquired, and for answer Alexis could do nothing but remove his hand and
allow a sudden stream of blood to spurt out and stain the carpet.

A.J., in astonished alarm, helped him into the bedroom and laid him on the
bed, discovering then that he had been shot in the chest and was still
bleeding profusely. The boy did not speak at first; he seemed to have no
strength to do anything but smile. When, however, A.J. had tended him a
little and had given him brandy, he began to stammer out what had happened.
He had, it seemed, fulfilled a secret task given him by revolutionary
headquarters. He had shot Daniloff, Minister of the Interior. He had done it
by seeking an interview and firing point-blank across the minister’s
own study-table. Daniloff, however, had been quick enough to draw a revolver
and fire back at his assailant as the latter escaped through a window. A
ladder had been placed in readiness by an accomplice, and Alexis had been
descending by it when Daniloff’s bullet had struck him in the chest. He
had hurried down, unheeding, and had mingled—successfully, he
believed—with the crowds leaving a theatre. He had been in great pain
by then, and knew that he dare not let himself be taken to a hospital because
in such a place his wound would instantly betray him. The only plan he had
been able to think of had been a flight to his friend’s apartment, and
though that was over a mile from Daniloff’s house, he had walked there,
despite his agony, and even in the porter’s office had managed to make
his request with-out seeming to arouse suspicion. Now, in his friend’s
bedroom, he could only gasp out his story and plead not to be turned
away.

There was no question of that, A.J. assured him; no question of that.
“You shall stay here, Alexis, till you are well again, but I must go
out and find a doctor—I have done all I can myself, I’m
afraid.”

The boy shook his head. “No, no, you can’t get a
doctor—he’ll ask questions—it’s impossible. But I
have a friend—a medical student—I will give you his
address—to-morrow you shall fetch him to me—he will take out the
bullet—and say nothing…”

“Tell me where he lives and I will fetch him now.”

“No, no—the police would stop you—they will be all
everywhere to-night—because of Daniloff.” He added: “I am
sorry to be such a bother to you—I wish I could have thought of some
other way. If only I had taken better aim I might have killed him
instantly.”

“Don’t talk,” A.J. commanded, huskily. “Try to be
quiet—then in the morning I will fetch your friend.”

“Yes. I shall be all right when the bullet is taken out.”

“Yes—yes. Don’t talk any more.”

He held the boy in his arms, that boy with the face of an angel, that boy
who had just shot a government minister in cold blood; he held him in his
arms until past one in the morning, and then, very quietly and apparently
with a gradual diminution of pain, the end came.

Till that moment A.J. had felt nothing but, pity for his friend; but
afterwards he began to realise that he was himself in an extraordinarily
difficult and dangerous situation. How could he explain the death of the boy
that night in his apartment? What story could he invent that would not
connect himself with the attack on Daniloff? The deep red stain in the midst
of his sitting-room carpet faced him as a dreadful reminder of his problems.
He had no time to solve them, even tentatively, for less than a quarter of an
hour after the boy’s death he heard a loud commotion in the street
outside and a few seconds later a vehement banging on the door of the
porter’s office. Next came heavy footsteps up the stairs and a sudden
pummeling on his own door. He went to open it and saw a group of police
officers standing outside, with the porter in custody.