The Red Symbol Part 22

He stopped short, with an exclamation of astonishment, at the sight of the dead man, and I laughed aloud, and called:

"h.e.l.lo, Mirakoff!"

It was queer; I recognized him, I heard myself laugh and speak, in a strange detached fas.h.i.+on, as if I was some one else, having no connection with the battered individual half sitting, half lying on the blood-stained floor.

"Who is it?" he asked, staying his men with a gesture, and staring down at me with a puzzled frown.

"Maurice Wynn."

"Monsieur Wynn! _Ma foi!_ What the devil are you doing here?"

"Curiosity," I said. "And I guess I've paid for it!"

I suppose I must have fainted then, for the next thing I knew I was sitting with my back to a tree, while a soldier beside me, leaning on his rifle, exchanged ribald pleasantries with some of his comrades who, a.s.sisted by several stolid-faced _moujiks_, were busily engaged in filling in and stamping down a huge and hastily dug grave.

At a little distance, three officers, one of them Mirakoff, were talking together, and beside them, thrown on an outspread coat, was a heap of oddments, chiefly papers, revolvers, and "killers." As I looked a soldier gathered these up into a bundle, and hoisted it on his shoulder.

A watch and chain fell out, and he picked them up, and pocketed them.

I heard a hoa.r.s.e word of command on the right, and saw a number of prisoners--the remnant of the revolutionists, each with a soldier beside him--file into the wood. They all looked miserable enough, poor wretches. Some were wounded, scarcely able to stand, and their guards urged them forward by prodding them with their bayonets.

I wondered why I wasn't among them, and guessed if they tried to make me march that way, I'd just stay still and let them prod the life out of me!

I still felt dazed and queer, and my broken left arm hurt me badly. It hung helpless at my side, but my right arm had been roughly bandaged and put in a sling, and I could feel a wad over the other wound, held in place by a scarf of some kind. My mouth and throat were parched with a burning thirst that was even worse than the pain in my arm.

The group of officers dispersed, and Mirakoff crossed over to me.

"Well, you are recovering?" he asked curtly.

I moved my lips, but no sound would come, so I just looked up at him.

He saw how it was with me, and ordered the soldier to fetch water. He was a decent youngster, that Mirakoff, too good for a Russian; he must have had some foreign blood in him.

"This is a serious matter," he said, while the man was gone. "Lucky I chanced on you, or you'd have been finished off at once, and shoved in there with the rest"--he jerked his head towards the new-made grave.

"I've done the best I could for you. You'll be carried through the wood, and sent in a cart to Petersburg, instead of having to run by the stirrup, as the others who can stand must do. But you'd have to go to prison. What on earth induced you to come here?"

The man came back with the water, and I drank greedily, and found my voice, though the words came slowly and clumsily.

"Curiosity, as I told you."

"Curiosity to see '_La Mort_,' you mean?"

"No; though I've got pretty close to death," I said, making a feeble pun. (We were, of course, speaking in French.)

"I don't mean death; I mean a woman who is called '_La Mort_.' Her name's Anna Petrovna. She was to have been there. Did you see her? Was she there?"

I forgot my pain for the instant, in the relief that his words conveyed.

Surely he would not have put that question to me if she was already a prisoner. Loris must have got away with her, and, for the present, at least, she was safe.

CHAPTER XXII

THE PRISON HOUSE

"There was a woman," I confessed. "And that's how I came to be chipped about. They were going to murder her."

"To murder her!" he exclaimed. "Why, she's one of them; the cleverest and most dangerous of the lot! Said to be a wonderfully pretty girl, too. Did you see her?"

"Only for a moment; there wasn't much light. From what I could make out they accused her of treachery, and led her in; she stood with her back against the wall,--she looked quite a girl, with reddish hair. Then the row began. There were only two or three took her part, and I joined in; one can't stand by and see a helpless girl shot or stabbed by a lot of cowardly brutes."

I had found an air of apparent candor serve me before, and guessed it might do so again.

"Well, what then?"

"That's all I remember clearly; we had a lively time for a few minutes, and then some one shouted that the soldiers were coming; and the next I knew I was sitting on the floor, wondering what had happened. I'd been there quite a while when you found me."

"It is marvellous how she always escapes," he said, more to himself than to me. "Still, we've got a good haul this time. Now, how did you get here? Some one must have told you, guided you?"

"That I can't tell you."

"You mean you won't?"

"Well, put it that way if you like."

"Don't be a fool, Wynn; I am asking you for your own sake. If you don't tell me, you'll be made to tell later. You haven't the least idea what you've let yourself in for, man! Come, did not Count Solovieff--you know well who I mean--bring you here?"

"No. I came alone."

"At least he knew you were coming?"

"He may have done. I can't say."

He shrugged his shoulders.

"Have it your own way. You will regret your obstinacy later; remember, I have warned you."

"Thanks,--it's good of you, Mirakoff; but I've told you all I mean to tell any one."

He paused, biting his mustache, and frowning down at me.

"Fetch more water," he said abruptly to the soldier, who had heard all that pa.s.sed, and might or might not understand; the Russians are a polyglot people.

"I have done what I could," Mirakoff continued hurriedly in the brief interval while we were alone. "You had two pa.s.sports. I took the false one,--it is yonder; they will think it belongs to one of the dead men.

Your own is still in your pocket; the police will take it when you get to prison; at least it will show your ident.i.ty, and may make things easier."

"Thanks, again," I said earnestly. "And if you could contrive to send word to the American or English Emba.s.sy, or both."