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Roy Glashan's Library
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Adventure, March 1915, with "No Name!"
LET any man who doubts the love men bore Dick Anthony go ask the Persians who trudged through the mud behind him to fight whom Dick told them to. Ask others of that country, who never so much as saw him, but who formed their estimate of him from talcs brought home by those subjected to his discipline. Or ask Andry—grim, tremendous Andry.
Nowadays Andry is back in Scotland, near the Kyles of Bute whose rocks and cross-currents he knows so intimately. Marie Macdougal, who was Marie Mouquin with a knife-wound in her shoulder when this story opens, mothers the big man very carefully because the German saber-thrust between his fourth and fifth ribs is not quite healed yet. She objects to his talking of the past, for fear lest he go in search of Dick. So in the house it would be no use to ask him.
But look for him somewhere out among the fields or barns of Dick's estate by Lamlash, leaning on a stout ash sapling, stewarding Dick's worldly goods. You will find him dour, distrustful as he looks, and given like most strong men to deep silences; but he will answer, if you ask him what he thinks of Dick. He is likely to spit into his great leathery hands, look into the wind and ask to be shown Dick's equal.
There would be no use trying to ask Jenison, for if you could find him Dick would be somewhere near, since nowadays the two hunt new game together, and bigger game than ordinary. Jenison, being American and quite irreverent, would point Dick out to you and bid you throw a stone at him and see.
If you asked the Russian Government about him you would learn, if you learned anything at alL,that there is an opposite to love, too often misnamed hate, that really is a sense of guilt. But individual Russians will admit that of all their modern foemen Dick was the stoutest, most ingenious, and least corruptible.
Incorruptibility—the logical, completely unexpected—unworldliness, yet a most amazing understanding of the world—above all that calm effrontery that is the birthright only of men who deal in truth—sat strangely on a red-haired, bare-headed boy of twenty-five, in the rain on a devastated battlefield.
And he sat strangely—on the pole of a Russian provision-wagon—looking about him, listening and saying nothing. Strange men sat near him. On the far end of the pole was Jenison, fat and unshaven, looking dissolute through the gun-smoke that had blackened all his face. His eyes peeped red-rimmed through the grime, for he had served a gun all night, in the teeth of a whistling wind.
Completing the triangle, perched uncomfortably on a big, unopened biscuit-box, was the General of the Russian cavalry brigade that Dick had whipped. He was the only military-looking person of the three, for Dick wore no uniform, and Jenison would not have worn one had he had the right.
The General was in possession of his sword still, a fact which seemed to cause the American some slight uneasiness, for the butt of a .45 protruded from his torn hip-pocket and the heel of his hand was ready by.
"What's the time?" asked Dick.
Jenison drew out his watch with his left hand, and held it where he could see the time without losing sight of the Russian for an instant.
"Seven-ten," he answered. "Teheran time."
It looked more like the quarter-hour that just precedes sunrise, for the watery sky was screened by a curtain of rain, and the covered wagons loomed out of murky twilight.
"No sign or word of Usbeg Ali?"
"None."
"No sign of breakfast?"
"I can smell it!" said Jenison, peering through the rain in the direction of a wagon that Dick's servant had taken over from the Russians. Then a mud-draggled Persian, smothered from head to foot in blankets to keep off the rain, emerged from shadow, beckoning.
"Thank God!" said Jenison.
Dick looked at the Russian.
"Care to join us at breakfast?" He spoke as if the General were a free agent with a dozen or more alternatives.
"I would be glad," he answered in perfectly good English.
Even the defeated General observed the decencies, and spoke as if Dick were inviting him to a meal not plundered from his own commissariat. He may have found consolation in his certain knowledge that the eatables would be from cases packed in Petersburg.
DICK led the way to the General's tent and Jenison brought up the rear, with a hand yet nearer to his pistol-butt, for the Russian could have cut Dick down with his sword easily, and with Dick dead there would have been an end of the campaign.
"Sorry to have to use your tent," said Dick, "but I've none of my own. You caught me in a hurry, traveling light."
He motioned the General to a seat at the table, and the General unhooked his sword to lay it on the camp-bed. With a grunt of relief Jenison took his eye from the General's right hand for the first time in an hour. The only thing he had ever found that could make him nervous was Dick's disregard of a certain kind of chances. Now, utterly unnervous, he settled down to cat like an adventurer.
"Ah!" said Dick suddenly.
Jenison and the Russian each Looked up and followed the direction of Dick's eye toward the camp-bed. From under the one thin pillow there protruded newspapers.
"I'll have to trouble you for those," said Dick, and without a word Jenison got up and reached for them.
"They're printed in Russian," he said, handing them to Dick.
There were four papers, and Dick folded them without a word of comment. The fact that he knew Russian, and could read it nearly as fluently as English, was knowledge that so far he had kept strictly to himself.
They ate in silence, and the Russian proved a good trencherman considering the fact that he was a beaten man and therefore dispirited. The coffee and the canned food were not such as men generally share on battlefields, and presently the General produced cigars so excellent that for a minute or more the tent was filled with memories, and no one spoke.
"Are you holding me to ransom?" asked the Russian suddenly.
His eyes looked cunning, but his full, square-bottomed beard concealed the corners of his mouth, and he might have been merely inquisitive. Jenison pricked up his ears and crossed one leg over the other.
"At the present moment I'm waiting for word from Usbeg Ali Khan, my second-in-command," said Dick. "He's supposed to be pursuing the remnant of your force into Persia."
"What good will that do you?" asked the Russian, as a father might argue with his son, a trifle patronizingly. He waved his cigar in a gesture that the West has never learned to imitate.
Dick looked interested but did not answer.
"Mr. Anthony, the wise man, when he holds a momentary advantage, makes the utmost use of it! What use can you make of me? I speak in my own interests, and Russia's, as much as yours of course; but what do you propose to do with me?"
The rain drummed on the sodden canvas of the tent, and a little stream splashed on the table between them, but the sides of the tent were pegged down tight and no wind could blow in to disturb them, or the smoke that coiled in the air in rings. Dick stared very hard at the Russian, and Jenison stared hard at Dick, but neither said a word.
"You have been a very lucky man. Your luck, in sweeping the Caspian of Russian ships, was even more remarkable than your skill and daring. But you are a man of perspicacity; you must see—you must realize—that you can not go on forever defeating our regiments in detail, or winning such battles as last night's.
"Now, Mr. Anthony, at this moment is the opportunity to get from Russia' the best terms possible!"
STILL Dick said nothing, and still Jenison, who scarcely could be said to know him yet, watched him with the trained eyes of a business-man. He and the Russian were both looking for a hint of greed in Dick's face. The Russian was being disappointed, and Jenison was feeling pleased.
"Money, Mr. Anthony, is a thing we all affect to despise, but when we get right down to ugly fact, money is the thing we all fight hardest for. Russia has money; she has unlimited supplies of it. You have none. Am I right?"
"So far as you've gone," said Dick, "you're almost exactly right." And the Russian gathered heart.
"Now, Mr. Anthony, you are aware that Russia is faced at this minute with a war on two fronts. She has to deal with Austria and Germany at once. Time is a factor in the situation. Every living man who is already mobilized ought to be hurried at once toward the Austrian or German frontier. You appreciate that, of course.
"Yet because of this rebellion of yours in Persia, no less than half a million men must be held under arms—ah—in this part of the world. Now the release of that half-million men is worth a price. Name your price. Let me conduct negotiations for you. I was sent down here with ten thousand men to finish you; since I have failed, I can serve my country best by making terms with you. Name your price, Mr. Anthony."
"My price is known," said Dick. "I have never made a secret of it."
"Then, I have been ill-informed," said the Russian with a twinge of disappointment. "Will you be good enough to tell me?"
"The freedom of Persia, neither more nor less for Persia—and—"
Dick hesitated, for his private honor was a subject that he hated to discuss.
"And?" said the Russian almost eagerly.
"And positive proof for myself of my identity! Neither more, nor less, for me!"
"But—Mr. Anthony—be practical! This talk about Persia is visionary—the matter is an international one. I—"
"You asked me my price and I have named it," said Dick rising. "I shall have to ask you for your parole."
"I give it."
Dick pointed to a side-table on which were pens and paper. "Kindly write it."
The Russian did as he was asked and signed the few lines with a flourish. Dick pocketed the paper at the moment that a horse sploshed toward the tent outside.
Its rider dismounted. The salaams of a Persian orderly left no doubt as to the newcomer's identity.
"COME in, Usbeg Ali!" shouted Dick, and a moment later the Afghan swaggered in, with the rain running from his beard and turban, and his high boots muddied to the top. His eyes burned with weariness, excitement, and lack of sleep, but his bearing was heroic. "Bahadur!"
"Have you breakfasted?" asked Dick.
"Long since! I made a Russian cook it for me," he boasted with a sideways look at the General. "They are scattered, bahadur! There is not a troop of them left together! Ten of my men have ridden ahead of them, to tell the Persians what to do. They flee, but they run from the devil into Hell!"
"Have you called the pursuit off?"
"Aye; the horses are more tired than the men. They are resting, in a line spread east and west. Are the wires cut, sahib, the wires between here and Russia?"
"Ripped out by the roots!" said Dick. "I've ordered the poles burned."
"Good. Would God there were a way of knowing what move the Russians make, without disclosing ours!"
"There is," said Dick, looking at Jenison; but Usbeg Ali Khan looked straight in the eyes of the Russian General. Without a spoken word each knew that the other had in mind the Russian way of winning secrets from the tribes of Turkestan and Bokhara.
"You'd better get your man," said Dick; and Jenison, with a wry face at the empty coffee-pot, went out into the rain in search of one of his Americans.
"Give the General another tent," said Dick. "I have his parole. One sentry with orders not to let him out of sight will be enough."
Usbeg Ali Khan beckoned to the Russian, and the two went out together, the General leaving his sword behind. Dick tossed it in a corner and lay down on the cot to devour the Russian newspapers.
He found them beautifully censored. There were vague reports of Russian victories in Galicia and Prussia; there were columns of exhortation; there was mention of activity about the oil-wells, and comment on the fact that this war would be one of gasoline.
But there was no mention at all of the army of half a million men that Dick believed either ready to invade Persia down the east side of the Caspian, or else already on its way. And there was no mention of himself, Dick Anthony. He read the papers line by line, hurriedly, but missing nothing and making mental note of many things that others might have missed.
Then, with a frown at the necessity, he strode to the General's table to rummage among the papers there, and burst open the General's dispatch-box with the General's own sword. There were some obviously private papers that he sealed in an envelope unread; but there was a little book, and certain other documents, that he pocketed with a smile.
Outside, in rain that was running wheel-rut deep, and in mud that stuck to his heels, Usbeg Ali assigned the Russian General to a tent, placed a guard over him, and then— tired though he was—proceeded on foot to sec for himself what provision Dick had made for his fighting infantry. There was no semblance of a camp, yet he could hear snores from every hand, and it was not until he peeped into a wagon that he understood.
THE Russian wagon-train, half-parked, half-straggling and evidently caught in panic in the night, lay as the Russians left it when Dick routed them. Wagons were here, there and everywhere; and under each of them, on anything that they could find to raise them from the wet, in each of them, on top of the high-piled commissariat, to leeward of each of them, beneath pilfered tent-flies or any other cover that would shed rain, Dick's dog-weary infantry lay snoring, warm and dry.
In other wagons, provided by the Russian Government for Cossacks in a hurry, soup was cooking. In and out among the wagons strode a giant—a big spludge of something, scarcely visible through the rain.
The giant caught sight of Usbeg Ali Khan and came hurrying toward him, flourishing a stick an inch thick. He raised the stick and did not lower it until he was less than ten feet away.
"I thought ye were one o' the rrrrank an' file," he grinned, pulling off his tam-o'-shanter to shake the rain out of it. "Mr. Dicky's orrrrders are tae lick the thunder out o' all except the cooks that dinna rest, an' tae lick the cooks if they du rest, I was about tae lick ye!"
Usbeg Ali chose to change the subject, for his dignity was dearer to him than his life. Besides, as second-in-command, he was Andry Macdougal's superior.
"What are they cooking?" he demanded. "Food such as the Russians eat?"
"Ah! Listen tae him! Suspeecion's the sperrit o' an Afghan! Dinna fash y'rsel'! There was a herd o' gude cattle wi' the Roosians, an' Mr. Dicky had the throats o' fifty o' them slit, so y'r releegious scrrrruples will na' be vexed. Man, ye luke wearrrry—y'r eyes burrrra in the sockuts—he advised, and fin' a place to rest y'r banes a while. Listen! I'll gie ye mine until I want it— I've made me a gude nest!"
But Usbeg Ali laughed and shook his head.
"Allah made my bones to hold a soldier's back straight!" he answered. "They'll rest when convenient to me! What of the dead? This is the first time he has made no special disposition of the dead."
Men spoke of Dick as "he" and "him" on that campaign, since he had told them that his name was "No Name," and Andry was not in doubt for a moment as to who "he" was.
"Suspeecion again!" he snorted, shaking the rain out of his cap a second time. "Gang an' luke! Gang an' luke yonder, where the Roosian prisoners are!"
Andry pointed eastward, and Usbeg Ali Khan walked off in that direction without another word. There were not many Russian prisoners, he knew, for he and his horsemen had chased all they could find southward into Persia where the natives waited for them; still, he realized some men must have been taken among the wagons, and no doubt some had tried to bolt back along the road to Russia.
He came on about two hundred men sooner than he expected, employed at a task they were ill-fitted for after a long night's battle. With some picks and shovels, and a motley assortment of improvised tools that included even swords, they were digging two long trenches, twenty feet apart and parallel, that could have but one grim purpose. They were supervised by some of Dick's non-commissioned officers; and others of Dick's men, armed and very much alert, were in charge of other weary prisoners who carried in the dead of either side with strict impartiality and laid them in long lines beside each trench.
The trenches were half full of water, and the tools sucked stubbornly through gluey clay.
"How many dead?" asked Usbeg Ali.
"As yet we have found seven hundred lacking nine of our own men, sahib."
"And of the Russians?"
"More than a thousand, and that not nearly all. There lie many more not brought yet."
USBEG ALI muttered a Moslem prayer and turned away. As the morning light shone stronger through the downpour he could see Dick Anthony standing, bareheaded as always, at the entrance to the Russian General's tent. Dick's arm was stretched out, and a dozen men were listening to him in the rain with rapt attention.
"What is he ordering now?" the Afghan wondered. "He forgets nothing and nobody! He is a man who is twenty-five; and I, who am Allah knows how old, am a child in war beside him! Yet Allah made me no mean soldier! Praised be Allah!"
He saw the men depart their different ways, and then watched Dick walk to a wagon near at hand that was very closely guarded. There were ten men posted around it, with fixed bayonets. From the opposite direction Jenison was coming with one of his Americans. The wagon was a strange one, of a type that Usbeg Ali in all his soldier experience had never seen.
From the middle of it rose a jointed pole to a great height, and from that were suspended wires that seemed to have no conceivable use, nor connection with anything except the wagon. But Dick seemed to regard wagon and wires with interest, so Usbeg Ali hurried, curious as a child. He arrived face to face with Jenison.
"Here he is," said Jenison. "This man can make a wireless out of a corkscrew and an old clock. He can work any kind of telegraph blindfolded, upside down, and drunk."
"Is he sober now?" asked Dick.
Jenison pushed the man forward and he stood with the air of being glad of the opportunity to see Dick at close quarters.
"Know any Russian?" Dick asked.
"No."
"Um-m-m! Look the machine over. See if it works, and let me know. Don't send a message of any kind. Listen for messages. Understand?"
The American nodded, and Dick watched him climb into the wagon.
"Now," said Dick, "come closer, Usbeg Ali. From what the General said to me at breakfast—you heard him, Jenison—it's clear to me that there's nothing in the way of troops ahead of us. These ten thousand were depended on to drive us eastward. And to make matters sure they've had nerve enough to send all they had. The ten thousand we have just beaten were all that stood between us and Baku; or he would not have been so anxious to bribe me."
Jenison nodded, and Usbeg Ali Khan stroked his wet beard reflectively.
"Come into my tent," said Dick, leading the way, and Usbeg Ali Khan thrust himself in front of Jenison, determined to assert his seniority and precedence at once to save confusion later.
Jenison gave way to him, but there was a flicker of amusement on his face that might have given the Afghan food for thought had he seen it.
The minute he got into the tent Dick produced a map and spread it on the table.
"Here's Tabriz," he said. "Practically all the mounted men the Russians had in Tabriz were with this force. I know that from prisoners. The few left behind to garrison the place won't amount to much. We can slip by Tabriz, between it and the Caspian. Then— d'you see—Baku lies naked at our feet, two forced marches beyond!"
"By the blood of God!" swore Usbeg Ali Khan.
"Looks like our meat!" grinned Jenison, rubbing his left ankle with his right heel as he always did when he felt jubilant or very much excited. He had rubbed a hole in his shoe the night before, when his gunners got the range and the shells exploded one after another at the spot intended.
"It means this," said Dick. "We can cut their communications east and west, and very likely paralyze them."
"How d'you mean, paralyze them?" Jenison demanded. "We're less than eight thousand, attacking millions. We can do damage;—just damage. Let's do it, but what's the use of being over-sanguine."
"I said paralyze them!" answered Dick. "I meant it." He laid his finger on the map again, and they stooped on either side of him to see. "Baku is—"
As he spoke, a Persian orderly came in, salaaming low.
"The Merikani in the wagon says the machine works," he announced.
"Tell him I'm coming!" Dick felt at his pocket to make sure the General's little book was there. "Go and sleep, you two men! Talk to you later!"
WHATEVER it was—instinct, intuition—it surely was not what the world calls knowledge—that, assured Dick Anthony he had a clear, straight road to Russia's vitals, it was confirmed step by step, point by point as the day wore on, and his swift-thinking mind pieced circumstance to incident and made an accurate conjecture of the whole.
The wireless-apparatus worked, as Jenison had prophesied it would. Sober as a judge, since there was no whisky anywhere, the most ingenious telegraphist that even the United States had ever grown too hot to hold imagined himself drunk as he took down letter after letter but completely failed to string them into words. Dick, sitting beside him in the wagon, checked off the letters and put pencil-dots at intervals, silent except for deep, steady breathing,
"Make head or tail of it?" the expert asked.
"Yes," said Dick.
When the instrument quit talking for a while, Dick drew out the General's little book and assured himself that the system of dots meant something. There was a page at the back of the book that dealt with nothing except dots. Then he sat on the wagon-tail with his legs in the rain but his body and hands inside, and started to decode the inside secrets of the most secret bureaucracy on earth.
"Where are you? Where are you? Where are you?" was the first part of the message, repeated a dozen times until apparently the operator at the other end grew tired of asking.
"Send out something indefinite," said Dick over his shoulder. "Send some word that'll let them know they're in touch without giving anything away."
"Easy!" said the expert; and he sent a signal that is part of the international code, and so well known that armies use it in their casual conversation. Instantly the tune was taken up from the other end again.
This is Baku. Where are you? Where are you? Why are the overland wires down? What is happening? Why don't you answer?
"Can you make it seem," said Dick, "as if we can receive but not send?"
"Sure," said the expert, wondering whether Dick had brandy in his tent and whether he would be likely to reward good service with a bottle of it.
Eying him sharply from the wagon-tail, Dick was thanking his stars that Jenison had such a man in his outfit. Incidentally he registered a mental vow that the man should drink water or go dry until the campaign ended.
After about five minutes more of frantic questioning the tale from the other end began to shape itself into the form of coded orders, repeated over and over again for the sake of certainty.
The Princess Olga Karageorgovich must be rounded up and held. Find out from her where the papers are. Don't trust her again on any conditions, or for any reason. Send her back here under close guard, unless....
A word followed that seemed to have no meaning, although Dick searched the code-book thoroughly. He pressed an arm against a bulky package underneath his shirt, and seemed to find pleasure in it.
"Send some sort of a fluttering answer," he said. "Let 'em feel sure we're listening."
Baku soon resumed in code:
Conditions on Prussian and Austrian fronts are serious. It is essential now that the men with whom you are supposed to act in concert be withdrawn for use in Europe. Not possible otherwise to mobilize East enough to meet conditions. You must work alone. No force will invade Persia from the east side of the Caspian. Press forward, but confine your efforts to recovery of the stolen plans tot our invasion, because owing to present conditions should Great Britain protest your presence in Persia you must be withdrawn. Above all things «et those plans. Try to trap Anthony. If the Princess has the plans already, get them from her. In any case get rid of Anthony, and get the plans.
DICK, worked with the code-book, pencil and a piece of paper, until he had an answer coded to his satisfaction. It was a risky game to play, to send an answer, for he had no means of knowing what peculiarities of style the General might have, and to have aroused suspicion would have been to throw away nine-tenths of his advantage. But he decided the risk was worth it.
Not knowing what he sent, the expert at the key flashed back to Baku—
Please reconsider.
The answer to that was immediate;—
Impossible!
Dick sent back, after an interval of worrying at the code—
Then reinforce me with ten thousand men.
Evidently the captured General was a man whom people humored as a rule, for they tendered him an explanation at some length.
Impossible! All troops available are being rushed westward. Speed is the great factor. The sooner you get the plans and finish Anthony, the better, because your ten thousand men would be very useful. Hurry. Let Persia wait until afterward. Can probably be made subject of ultimate peace negotiations. But get the plans and finish Anthony before you hurry back.
That seemed to be all Baku had to say for the time being, for the expert reported nothing further coming through.
"Stay there then and write down whatever does come without answering," commanded Dick. "Send for me if they begin any rigmarole."
"By the way—" said the expert.
"What?" asked Dick.
"My nerves are in a rotten state, and I'd like some brandy."
"Oh," said Dick, and he walked away abruptly.
He met Jenison, sore-eyed from lack of sleep, heading for a tent that somebody had pulled out of the loot and pitched for him near Dick's.
"That wireless-man of yours " said Dick.
"Yes—what about him?"
"Has just asked me for brandy."
"Don't give it him."
"Exactly, but before you go to sleep please set your next best man to watch him. Promise both of them a drumhead court-martial if I can smell drink on the breath of either!"
"Good!" said Jenison, who knew his men and how they should be handled.
DICK went back to his newspapers, and to rummage among the General's belongings. He found and studied the General's campaign-map that showed where the roads were, and the wells, and what forage and provisions might be expected at places on the road. He compared that map with his stolen, secret one—the map that betrayed intended treachery and that Russia now had sent ten thousand men to find. Then he sent for a prisoner who had talked already, and asked him again a string of questions whose gist the man did not understand.
The fellow stood at attention, dropping his eyes when Dick looked straight at him, shifting from one foot to another and looking about him wildly whenever Dick looked away.
Rain swished and drummed on the tent; wind whistled through the ropes and kept the fly snapping. There was no more light than filtered dimly through wet canvas, nor any other sound inside the tent than their two voices—Dick's insistent, and the other's sullen and afraid—except the drip-drip-drip of a tiny stream of water on the table.
"Who told you there are no more sotnias—no infantry, no artillery—marching south behind this cavalry-brigade of yours?"
Dick spoke in Russian, now that there was nobody to hear except the Russian; his unaccustomed tongue had trouble with the consonants, but the man did not need to ask him to repeat his question. There was something about Dick Anthony that made him understandable to any one, in any tongue, when he wanted to be understood.
"It is known. They all know."
"Who know?"
"They. The others. There were half a million men held these months long, east of the Caspian; it was known they were for Teheran, and for God knew what beyond. There were mutinies—not big ones, but many little ones, and there was grumbling all the time. None wanted to invade Persia, for what had Persia done? We of the army are Cossacks, Turkomans, Armenians; what grudge bear we against the Persians? We did not want to go."
Dick nodded. It was not the first time he had found out that the Russian soldier would prefer minding his own business if his rulers would let him.
"Then came news of war with Germany! Then, as if God had touched Russia with
His finger—so—and turned her into gold, all was changed in an eye-flash. What had been mutiny was discipline. What had been sloth and hanging back was eagerness. What had been many minds and many purposes was one. Russia is one now, and we all prayed that we might light for her. Men forgot Persia. We prayed for leave to march westward."
Dick nodded, taking care not to look directly at the man, for fear of disconcerting him. Sideways, from under lowered lids, he was studying more than the psychology of serfdom; he was weighing the man's words; he was sifting word by word, hunting for the truth. And in the end he rejected not one word of all that the man said, for he knew truth when he met it. Like every other Russian, and in spite of the ruling caste, this man loved Russia with the whole of his peasant heart, and knew but one grief at that moment.
"There was nothing printed—no news; yet word went around that every man was needed, and we came. I am a reservist. My time is nearly up. I have nine children to provide for, and I am a widower. But I came.
"God will protect my children, so be I fight for Russia. But this—this southward march—this is not Russia's business! It is no wonder we are defeated in a night— it is the hand of God! The half-million received orders to march westward against Germany. Only we ten thousand—we miserable men—were sent down lure. None were to follow. We were to hurry on some secret business, and hurry back.
"We are beaten. God willed it. Now nothing matters. There are no more who follow us. The troops all march westward, by road and train, on foot, on horse, and in motor-cars."
DICK'S face moved slightly. He gave the same impression that a hound does that hears the almost inaudible.
"Motor-cars?" he asked.
"Aye! God knows where they come from. None knew there were so many in all Russia, Every sort and kind of motor-car, loaded with men. More men go by motor than by train, and men say it is so all over Russia."
"Then, if I retire into Persia, will Russia not send an army after me?"
"Why? Men have forgotten Persia! The road leads westward. Every man whose feet and heart are good goes westward. There would be rebellion if an order came to march into Persia!"
"Very well," said Dick. "Here is some money for you."
He counted gold from the General's cash-box, and gave it to him. The man laid the money on the table and burst into tears.
"Let me go! Let me go and fight for Russia!" he demanded.
"You shall," said Dick.
The man stared open-mouthed.
"You shall go with me."
"You! You? You will fight for Russia?"
"Is England Russia's enemy?" asked Dick.
"Nay. Men say—I have heard—England and France and Russia—"
"I am from England."
"Then—"
"It is time," said Dick, "for you to return to the guard-tent. Can you hold your tongue?"
"Surely. None better."
Dick laughed. For a man who had just laid bare every single secret that be knew this fellow had a strange conceit of himself.
"If you talk in the guard-tent," Dick assured him, "you shall not go back to Russia. You shall be hounded into Persia along the road the others took!"
The man laid a work-calloused hand across his own mouth.
"I am silent on all points," he said, "until I have leave to speak!"
"What is your name?" asked Dick, taking a pen as if about to make a note. But the man did not answer, and Dick could not coax another word from him. Satisfied, he raised his voice into a shout that carried against the raging wind and rain as far as the orderly who waited twenty yards away.
"Take him to the guard-tent, and have him watched closely," he commanded when the orderly appeared.
Then he pulled on the military-cloak that Andry had robbed for him from the man who plundered it from the body of a Cossack officer, and set out, face to the rain, for a distant wagon around which a guard was set as if it had been another wireless-plant.
On his way he sighted Andry and waved to him. The big man turned and followed into the wind, leaning forward like a gnarled tree; something around his neck streamed out behind him like a storm-wrenched bough. The two were side by side when they came to the solitary wagon, and the guard presented arms. Dick stopped, and Andry strode closer to peer in.
"Ye may come!" he said tersely over his shoulder to Dick.
DICK first, and then Andry after him, climbed into the wagon by a wheel, and sat down on some grain-bags opposite a plump, pale woman who sat propped up on a litter. She smiled at Andry first and signaled to him with her eyes before she greeted Dick.
"I want you to remember," Dick began.
She nodded, for since Marie Mouquin had let curiosity get the better of her, and had taken the consequence in the form of a knife-wound, she had studied reticence. As women of her type may always be depended on to do, she had gone from one extreme to its opposite.
She had detested Andry once; so now she loved him with all the fervor of her French heart. She had always been garrulous; so now she imitated Dick and grudged words, especially when first spoken to. She had been faithful to the Princess Olga Karageorgovich, in spite of cruelty and crime; so now there was no limit to her disregard for the ties that had been. She nodded three times running.
"When you first saw me in Egypt—" Dick leaned toward her and spoke slowly—"the Princess was plotting a rebellion in Egypt against British rule. Was she doing that on behalf of Russia or on her own account?"
Marie smiled.
"On behalf of Russia," she replied.
"Are you sure? Positive? Had you any proof?"
"She has no money of her own—not one sou," said Marie Mouquin. "Yet in Egypt she gave away more than a million roubles. Is that not proof?"
"Was she playing Russia's game or her own, then, when she tricked me into landing in Russia instead of Turkey?"
"Both. She wanted you. She used to lie awake all night and sob for you. But she knew that she could only win you by using you for Russia's ends, and so making use of all Russia's resources to compel you."
"Did she invent this scheme to invade Persia?"
"No."
"Are you sure?"
"Quite sure. But she knew of the plan. And the idea of driving you into Persia, to become an outlaw and so give excuse for the invasion, was all hers. She stipulated that afterward you should be hers—her reward—to do with as she pleased. They trusted her. They let her have authentic copies of the maps and plans. It was only after I stole the plans for the invasion and sent them to Andry that they lost confidence in her and her downfall began—or so I think."
"Are you sure, beyond any doubt or possibility of doubt, that Russia had this half-million men ready to invade Persia? Are you sure the plan was not just a plan, just a scheme concocted by the Princess, that she intended but that the Russian Government did not intend?"
"You have the plans," said Marie Mouquin. "You have seen them."
"But I haven't seen the half-a-million army!" answered Dick. "Are you sure it was meant for Persia?"
"Mr. Anthonee, I know!" Now it was Marie who leaned forward and spoke slowly, earnestly. "All those months long I lived with her. Often I shared her bed. I ate with her. I wrote her letters. I was secretary, maid, confidante, stalking-horse, scapegoat, everything. Should I not know?
"Why, I have spoken with the men who came to her from beyond the Atrak River and begged her give orders to advance. They told me the men were mutinous from inactivity. They begged me to persuade the Princess to give orders. It was all in her hands then. Mr. Anthonee—"
She leaned further forward, so that Andry held an arm out to restrain her. Then she continued:
"You think you are unfortunate. You call yourself 'No Name' because Russia took your name away. I assure you—I swear to you that she, and only she, is answerable for all your trouble! It was she who advised the Russian Government to cable London an account of your death and burial at sea. What lies has she, or any one, been telling you now that you doubt at the last minute?"
Andry cleared his throat with a noise like a dog quarreling about a bone.
"I dinna doot 'at Jezebel was a lovelier lass, an' mair respectable than she!" he growled.
DICK did not answer. Nor did he doubt. He had the gift of seeing things in better perspective and with broader view than most men. It did not trouble his red head if people mistook his infinite pains, his care in sifting and re-sifting evidence, his fairness and honesty, for doubt. He would have liked to believe that England's ally was honest; but he did not believe it. He was more sure now than ever that the half-million army had been meant in the first instance for a hand that should reach out and seize the Persian Gulf.
He asked no more questions, made no more remarks. He left the covered wagon as he had entered it, in silence and without excuse, vaulting over the end into a pool of liquid ooze and walking ahead regardless of the rain and of the fact that his cloak was all undone.
He did not know whether he was wet or dry. He had gone a hundred yards before he noticed that Andry Macdougal was not with him. Then he turned as if shot, and his strange strong voice, that could carry through the din of battle when he raised it, blared through the storm as no bugle ever did.
"Andry! Come out of that! Come along!"
One foot at a time, and slowly, the giant let his six-feet-five of beef and bone descend to mother earth. It was not the mud nor the rain that made him reluctant, nor the wind that made him look sheepish as he came.
"Go and sleep!" commanded Dick. "But listen, first! That's an honest woman. An honest woman with an army—with an army that began by being more than one-half bandit—is in a predicament. I'll have you understand, my man, that I'll thrash the lout who gives any one excuse for gossiping about her. Understand me?"
"Aye!"
"Until we can find a minister who can marry you, you'll take no liberties!"
"Aye. I ken. Mr. Dicky—"
"Eh?"
"I apologize."
But Dick had forgotten him and the incident. He never could bother himself with what was done with, nor clutter up his mind with useless memories, even for a second. He was striding forward with the rain behind him, thinking of the last part of the game that lay ahead.
HE passed Usbeg Ah" Khan on his way, heavy-eyed now, waiting in the rain for word with him.
"Bahadur—"
"Go and sleep. You need it."
"To hear is to obey. But—"
"Go and sleep!"
Dick passed on, as if to hear were really to obey, but the Afghan hurried after him. "Bahadur—"
"Is the camp safe?" Dick asked him.
"Aye, but—"
"Are the pickets placed and under cover?"
"Aye, but—"
"Go and sleep!" said Dick, turning on his heel and striding forward.
So Usbeg Ali Khan, gentleman adventurer of swarthy skin and gallant heart, went to a nest his man had made for him between some grain-bags and slept as adventurers may do occasionally when their ten-man task is done.
But Dick did not sleep. Not even the wish to sleep occurred to him, though he had fought and won a battle through a long, wet night, after a long day's march with men who had to be watched each mile of the way. Great men have the trick of waking when Dame Fortune's stakes are on the table and the game is on. He lay, hour after hour, on the Russian General's bed, with his muddy boots on the General's private blanket, and thought out the problem point by point.
It seemed to him that Russia had not wanted the war in Europe. The idea that England and France might have wanted war drew a laugh from him. It began to look to him as if England, France and Russia had been forced into a fight quite unexpectedly, and therefore as if disclosure of the ugly facts about Russia's previously contemplated treachery would be disconcerting. Russia, it seemed to him, would be likely to pay a big price to keep back those facts.
"For the sake of England and France," he said to himself, "I'll save Russia's face for her. But she shall pay the price to Persia and to me in full, and in advance! Who sups with Russia, Richard Anthony, sups with a long spoon or goes hungry, and we're hungry enough—too hungry. We'll use the spoon!"
He arose and opened the tent-flap an inch or two.
"Call me in four hours' time exactly!" he ordered the man on guard.
Then he lay on the General's bed, and was asleep in less than thirty seconds, sleeping like a little child.
DRESSED as a Persian woman, on a horse that Dick had given her, carrying a steel box that Dick had let her take, the Princess Olga Karageorgovich spurred into Persia past a line of Russian fugitives who fled from Usbeg Ali's cavalry. She ignored Russians and Usbeg Ali's men alike, for the Russians were supposed to be her own, and Dick's leave to be gone was passport enough to protect her from recapture.
There were two exactly parallel deep wrinkles on her brow, that changed her face, as by a miracle, from captivating charm to freezing repulsiveness. Under them her violet eyes glowed sullenly, and her parted lips, that showed two even rows of exquisitely modeled teeth, were hard and straight. From behind she still may have looked like a woman to be loved and followed, though a man who noticed first the laboring of her horse and her disregard of the beast's necessity might have reached a different conclusion; from in front there was no mistaking her as some one to avoid.
Not that she sought company. She turned in the saddle to tongue-lash runaways who dared keep too close to her, and those ahead hurried away to left and right to give her the road and avoid the whip she wielded.
When, before many miles, there was a choice of two roads and one of them curved eastward toward the Caspian she took that one, to be out of the path of the pursued. And once alone—once in a hollow where she was not likely to be seen—she watered her horse, and hobbled him to graze, tying the rein cleverly around his foreleg.
She neither drank, nor rested. Going straight to the hardest, sharpest rock in sight she toiled for twenty minutes like a mason, trying to burst the steel box, until her knuckles bled and she sank to the earth exhausted. She fell asleep there, with her forehead resting on the box and her lips muttering either a prayer or imprecation.
The time was not long gone when she would not have troubled herself to open the box, provided only that she had been sure its contents were intact. Then, when she was Russia's Secret Government's first representative and knew her instructions all by heart, her mind had been only occupied about the practise of the plan.
Now, since Russia had done with her and Dick Anthony would have none of her, it was her business to find out just what she bad left with which to bargain, A sickening thought, half-dream, occurred to her as she moved to ease her limbs, and in an instant she was wide awake again, hammering the rock.
Why had Dick Anthony dared let her have that box? If it contained, as she thought it did, plans and a map that would prove the Russian Government a traitor to its ally, Dick could have made a better bargain with it than to toss it to her as the price of riddance.
He could have bought Russian citizenship, a commission in the Russian army, and a million roubles with the contents of that box, and he must have known it. Yet he had let her take it. She recalled his words as she knelt with the box raised above her head, poised for a downward crash against the rock with all her strength.
"You may take it as the price of your departure. I will bribe you with it!"
The words stuck in her craw the more uncomfortably because she had accepted the bribe, and because the thought kept coming to her that Dick did not deal in bribes as a rule. She grew convinced that there was a trick somewhere, that she had been fooled, that Dick had been laughing at her when he let her go with what she thought such a prize of prizes. She doubled and redoubled her efforts to smash the box open; but it had been pressed at the Russian arsenal from armor-steel, and she did no more than chip the lacquer from off the outside.
AT last, sobbing from her effort and from rage, she caught the horse again and mounted. She was not in such a hurry now. She did not flog so desperately, nor lean forward in the saddle. Nor did she continue on the road to Persia.
At a slow amble she rode back toward Dick's camp, avoiding Russian fugitives as much as possible, and refusing to have word at all with those who managed to throw themselves in her way and ask advice or orders. She rode for several hours, until she was brought to a stand at last by one of Usbeg Ali's outposts.
"The other way!" the man ordered. "None pass this way! Back into Persia!"
But Dick had forgotten when he gave her the box that for a month past it had held his valuables and had been carried by an orderly who treated it as sacred. The man had magnified his office until Dick's army grew to regard the box as some sort of almost-magic talisman, and now it rested in front of her, on the pommel of the saddle.
She raised it, almost without thinking. The man saluted at once, and quick as lightning she divined the reason. She held it up high, and the man made way for her. Since long before history was written the caliph's ring, or the emir's jewel, or some other article known to belong to royalty has been an unchallengeable passport throughout Persia and the greater part of Asia.
She rode on unmolested. It was not until after a wordy argument with a dozen of his fellows and an officer that the man spurred after her, and past her, and carried word of her coming through the rain to Dick's camp. And even then the orderly outside his tent refused to wake Dick until his stipulated four hours' sleep was over.
So the Princess sat in the rain and waited for him—a wet, lone woman, on a dispirited-looking horse—and Dick, awake at once when the orderly called him, strode out unexpectant and met her face to face.
"I have come to ask mercy!" she said instantly, speaking before he could say anything. "Is there any mercy in this camp? There is none outside."
"What do you mean?" demanded Dick.
"Mean?"
She held the box out. Then she tossed it to his feet, and for a moment he supposed that she had found some way of opening it already, and had discovered his trick. He turned it over with his toe, and it was only then that the truth dawned on him, and with it a new idea.
"Nothing less than dynamite would open that!" she said. "What use is it to me? How do I know what is inside it?"
"And she wouldn't dare use dynamite, of course," thought Dick, "for fear of destroying the contents."
"What use do you propose to make of the contents?" he asked her.
"Sell them! Sell them, of course! Sell them to the British! They are worth more to Russia, but Russia would bargain with me and then send me to Siberia! I will sell them to the British, in return for protection!"
"Where do you propose to make your bargain with the British Government?" Dick asked her.
"Where else but at Teheran? I might get through to Teheran, and there is nowhere else to turn."
"I will give you a pass and an escort to Teheran," said Dick, "provided when you get there you will give the box and its contents to the British Minister. I shall add a letter to what is already in the box, and something else. In the letter I shall say that you will prove my identity!"
Their eyes met. She remembered a former occasion when he had offered to regard her as a friend if she would ride to Teheran and prove him Dick Anthony of Arran, as only she could have done. She remembered his scorn when she refused him. Then she had been at the zenith of her power and believed that she could wear Dick down into submission to her; now she was a suppliant for mercy, and her eyes fell in front of his. ~
"I surrender!" she said quietly, and then she dismounted into a foot of slimy mud.
DICK shouted for his orderly, and sent the man running to bring Usbeg Ali Khan and Jenison, keeping the Princess waiting in the rain for ten more minutes until his witnesses were there. Usbeg Ali Khan, when he came at last on a horse that needed forcing into the downpour, evidently thought he had come to see an execution.
"Which is it to be—hanging, shooting, or burning alive?" he asked pleasantly.
But Dick led the way into his tent and sent another orderly hurrying off to the women's part of the camp where the wounded were being cared for.
"Get some kind of a change of clothes for her!" he ordered. "Get them, d'you hear me! Don't dare come back without them. Then see that she has a tent, or some place in which to change!"
Dick laid the box, all muddied, on the table and produced its key. He opened it, and the Princess gasped. Usbeg Ali grinned.
"Blank paper, and a few out-of-date muster-rolls, you see! Nothing much to bargain with!"
Dick was looking at her eye to eye across the table; the pupils of his eyes dilated to make the most of the dim light.
"Then you cheated me! Then you tricked me!"
"I tricked you. Yes."
"Bah! A bandit's trick! A trick for the sake of trickery! And to what purpose? To get rid of me? I would have gone in any case!"
Usbeg Ali laughed aloud, and Jenison looked uncomfortable. He was trying to combine American ideas on the treatment of lone women with his other, equally pronounced and soldierly notions about spies and treachery. The man in him told him to be sorry for the Princess; experience and intuition bade him caution Dick. He compromised by holding his tongue and looking away when the Princess glanced at him.
"There shall be no trick this time," said Dick, emptying the box by turning it upside down. "Perhaps you recognize this?"
The Princess nodded and her fingers twitched as she recognized a letter that had been enclosed with the map that she proposed to offer to the British. It was a letter of four closely written pages, explaining much that was on the map. It would be enough to interest the British Government, and to excite its curiosity to know more, but it would not be enough in itself to convict the Russian Government. Dick put it in the box.
Then he took pen and paper, and wrote a short letter on one sheet that he showed to nobody. Signed, but unsealed, he put it in the box with the Russian letter, and holding the box up in full view of the Princess he locked it, putting the key back in his own pocket.
"Now," he said, "I'll send this key by a man whom I can trust to the British Minister at Teheran. The man shall leave within an hour. You—" he looked straight in the Princess' eyes—"shall leave for Teheran at dawn tomorrow with an escort of ten men, and you shall carry the box.
"If you can satisfy the British Minister that you are the Princess Olga Karageorgovich, and that I am Richard Anthony of Arran, you will be able to make terms with him I think. You may tell him he will find me at Baku! Let me have one of your Afghans, Usbeg Ali, to carry the key, and ten dependable men to ride with her at dawn. Thanks.
"Now, is her tent ready? Are dry clothes in it for her? What kind of clothes? Persian? Very well, that can't be helped. Understand me, Usbeg Ali, I don't want to see her again. You see to it that she and her escort leave at daybreak!"
"She shall leave or die!" growled the Afghan.
As the Princess walked out she nodded to Dick familiarly, ignored Jenison as a person of no importance, and laughed at Usbeg Ali Khan; but she followed the Afghan to the tent assigned to her, and once she was inside, he set a guard closely spaced around it.
DICK ANTHONY'S determination—that was summed up from his point of view by the motto of his family: "Agree with thine adversary quickly!"—was doubled now, and a fire burned in him that was contagious. More seemed within his reach than met any eye but his. He had set Persia first and himself last, and would keep that order in his mind until his last pledge was fulfilled, but he was no less zealous because his own reward loomed large beyond a cloud of difficulties.
Difficulties! It needs difficulties to bring out the manhood of such men as Dick. A good horse is not wasted when the course is long and the going bad; nor is a good man thrown away if matched against the almost overwhelming. But encouragement is good in either case. Having nothing of the demagogue about him, nor more of the visionary than a man of practise should have, Dick did not dream that Persia would be other than ungrateful to the end. But he saw his own reward ahead, entirely apart from Persia and her destinies; and the cause of Persia grew terrifically more ascendant in proportion.
"You look," said Jenison, stopping him on his way across the camp, "like a boy who is going to eat pie!"
"I am," said Dick, and Jenison stood still in front of him blocking the way that he might study Dick's face and bearing better.
Rather fat, muddied to the hips, troubled a little by his rheumatism, Jenison looked exactly the part of a gallant gentleman who is game in spite of the odds, and means to see the thing through to a finish. His smile was glued on, so to speak; he kept it there as the gentlemen adventurers would wear their ladies' gloves in other days.
But looking at things from a common-sense American business point of view (as in his very nature he could not help doing), he could see very little percentage in a raid into Russia with eight thousand men and six guns. There might be fun in it, perhaps, but little profit. Besides, since the fight of the night before they were running very short indeed of ammunition.
"Punkin pie!" he said, grinning up at Dick.
"I never tasted that kind," Dick assured him. "But I get your meaning. Yes. I'm coming into my own at last."
Jenison looked from left to right and all around him. There was none to overhear, for all the men and officers were busy under Dick's orders, and Dick was crossing from one shelter to another to inspect. He looked back, straight into the rain at Dick's eyes.
"I've only known you a few days," he said, "but I'm interested. I'd like to know what your idea of the ultimate attainment is. Tell me and I'll keep it secret, if you say so."
"A commission in the British Army," Dick said quietly.
"A commission—in the British Army! You?"
"Why not?"
"Is that all the graft you hope to get out of this?"
"It's all one man can carry!" answered Dick.
"And you expect to get a commission in the British Army by invading the territory of England's most important ally, at the exact moment when a setback to either of them would be most inconvenient?"
"If you put it that way, yes," smiled Dick.
"It's the wildest idea of blackmail I ever heard of! You're an original!"
THE rain streamed from Dick's hair down his face and shoulders, for he never would wear a hat, but he made no offer to move; and Jenison, smothered in a seaman's sou'wester and oilskins, was too absorbed in the study of him to know any longer whether it was raining or not.
"D'you mean to tell me," Jenison demanded, "that you cooked all this up—this rebellion, this expedition, all this business—for the sake of a commission in the British Army?"
Dick laughed at him.
"No," he said. "I left England with a commission in the Territorials. Couldn't get anything better because an uncle of mine took steps to prevent me. I ran into this affair by accident—to me; it was design on Russia's part. Never dreamed of a war in Europe; wouldn't have left home for a kingdom if I'd thought there was the remotest chance of it. Now, if there's anything can keep me from getting back to Europe with my man Andry I'd be interested to know what it is. When we've cleaned this tangle up I'll try for my commission."
"How?"
"Does it ever happen to you," said Dick, "in business, for instance, that you can see in your own mind how you're going to do a thing—exactly how everything is going to break—and yet you wouldn't trust yourself to put it into words?"
"Often," said Jenison.
"There you have it, then," said Dick, making a move to pass on.
So Jenison stepped aside into a puddle and stood in it to stare after Dick, who strode across camp like the god of war, indifferent to everything but the end he aimed at and its means.
"The fools ought to have kept him and made him join the army. They'd have won the war by now!" swore Jenison.
He went on his way then, over toward his mud-smeared guns, with a smile on his lips that was less mechanical, and the little crowd of English and Americans whom he had brought from Teheran detected the change in him, gathered around him, and teased him for information.
"All I know is that we start at midnight," he told them, then added, to the extent of his own scant information: "There'll be a small mounted advance-guard under Usbeg AH Khan. Then we follow with the guns and a spare team for each gun to help haul 'em.through the worst places; then the infantry, and a rear-guard of mounted men again. How much ammunition have we got, boys?"
"Ten rounds a gun," said somebody.
"Is that all?"
"Every ounce!"
"——!" said Jenison.
DICK passed the tent that had been given the Princess with a frown on his face that he could never quite refrain from at mere thought of her. What hurt him, strangely enough, was not her desperate villainy nor the months of misery that she had brought on him, but the fact that she made it impossible for him to respect her as he wanted to respect all women. His one weak point was his too punctilious chivalry. Even now, when she called to him from between the tent-flaps, he turned to listen to her and could find a smile of courtesy.
"Mr. Anthony!"
His smile grew sunnier, for of late she had always called him by his first name. He recalled her "I surrender" of an hour ago, and felt almost friendly.
"It is very cold and wet. I am only a woman, and I have been exposed to more rain than is good for me. Is there no brandy—perhaps even vodka—in the camp? May I have some, please? Otherwise, I don't think I will ever get to Teheran with your message!"
Across Dick's mind there flashed recollection of a wagon-load of vodka, part of the loot of the Russian camp, that he had ordered kept under rigid guard because he had use of his own for it.
He went to the wagon, made one of the sentries pull out a small cask of the stuff, and, because there was no sense in leaving a broached cask to tempt the men, carried the whole thing to the Princess' tent. It was marked on the outside in Russian "Alcohol 96%."
"Help yourself!" he smiled, rolling the small cask into her tent, and noticing as the flap fell back how meager were the comforts provided for her. She looked cold and miserable, and there was no bed in the tent at all.
He went off at once and ordered a Russian officer's cot-mattress taken to her, with half a dozen plundered Russian blankets. He had food sent to her. And because the close ring of sentries set by Usbeg Ali irked his sense of what was due a woman, he ordered them away and left only one to watch her.
Then he went off about the thousand and one different things that call for the attention of a man who would lead eight thousand on a raid. One of the first things was to have all the rest of the vodka spilled into whatever shallow receptacles were to be found, and every marching man of the force was made to file by and bathe his feet in it. Those who wanted to were allowed to rub it on their stomachs. Then came the turn of the horses, and what was left when their tired muscles had been rubbed with it was poured out in the mud.
The camp became like an ants' nest for activity; and when the rain ceased at last and the clean, sweet air called out the fighting-men from under cover to fill their lungs and stretch themselves, there was too much commotion and too much hilarity for minor things to be much noticed. Certainly nobody noticed a long slit in the back of the Princess' tent, and a finger that rose and fell up and down in what might have been unpremeditated sequence of short and long strokes.
Nobody noticed that the tent assigned to the Russian General, that was back to back to hers and a hundred yards away, had a slit in the back of it too, or that another finger did very much the same thing in that slit.
Nor did it seem to be anybody's business that the sentry on duty by the Princess' tent should go close to the fluttering flap and be given a cupful of strong vodka. True, he was a Mohammedan and not supposed to drink it. True, several saw him and as many envied him. But there is a schoolboy camaraderie among campaigners that forbids them to tell tales about less delinquencies than treason; and there is an easy equivocation current among the less strict Moslems that says "spirits are not wine." The Prophet forbade wine, but said nothing about vodka.
And vodka is generous stuff, when a man has not tasted spirits for a year or two. It warms up the cockles of his heart, lets out the reefs in his imagination, and makes him see logic that would otherwise seem treason to him.
The sentry loved Dick, as a good soldier may love and reverence his officer. The vodka told him to be like Dick, if he could. And Dick's chivalry—the lengths that Dick would go to oblige a woman—were a subject of everlasting fable and exaggeration among his men. A second helping of raw spirit, passed to him by a slim hand through the opening of the tent, opened the man's ears and made mere words sound like the whispering of angels.
"Would he take a message? In the name of Allah the Compassionate, why not?"
WITHIN five minutes the General was in possession of a scribbled note; and within five minutes more the Princess had her answer, scribbled across the lines of the same sheet of paper. Both messages were long, and detailed.
Then, would the sentry not be pleased to let a lady by? Had the sentry not been given vodka? Was the vodka not excellent? Would he like some more? Surely she would come back! She would come back within ten minutes. Yes, she could see Dick Anthony now, examining the captured Russian cattle; surely she would be back before he had finished; it would take him thirty minutes more at least to complete his inspection at that rate, and she would be back in less than fifteen. Meanwhile, here was a third cup of good vodka, and if the sentry would step aside for just one second—so—
She was gone—a veiled Persian woman slipping by the shadows in a camp where a woman of any kind was sacred. She had vodka—lots of it—in the gourd they had provided for her drinking-water, hidden under her long veil.
Luck, of the most amazing kind, seemed to shadow the Princess always in the inception of her plans and the beginning of their evolution. It was nothing less than luck that made Jenison relieve the guard on the wireless-wagon with another man who was half-stupid from being aroused from heavy sleep.
He had taken up his duty about five minutes before the Princess came, and was still wondering sleepily whether Jenison meant the talk about strong drink to be a joke. Where was the strong drink, anyhow? And if there were any, who would be the guy—the thirsty, thirsty guy—who got the first crack at it? Eh? And how much would there be left in that event for anybody else, unless there were an awful lot of booze?
His reflections were not interrupted, rather they were led gently on by the smell of strong drink, and at that a new smell that he did not know. And then from beside the wagon-wheel a cup was held out to him by a Persian woman, who said in very pretty broken English—
"Wid Meester Anthonee's compleemens."
Now, was not that thoughtful and decent of Dick? Who wouldn't fight to a finish for a commander who remembered the men on guard in that way? He reached for the cup, swallowed its contents, and allowed the veiled lady to fill it again. The second cup made him cough, and his head swam so that he did not ask for a third; he was satisfied to lean on his rifle and wonder at the world at large.
He did not watch to see which way the woman went, nor did he care which way; and he was not listening very carefully. He was thinking of Dick Anthony—wondering why he called himself "of Arran," and "No Name"— wondering what color Dick's amazing eyes were, and whether Dick was as strong physically as men said he was and as he seemed to be. He was wondering, too, what he would do if he had had Dick's personal charm and ability to make men follow him.
He was not thinking at all of the wagon behind him, and he was not quite sure how many people ought to be in it, anyhow. He knew it was a wireless-plant, and—oh yes, the fellow in charge of it must not drink—souse, most likely—pity some fellows would souse at the wrong time. Now he....
THROUGH the slit in the covered front of the wagon a slim hand, followed by the shapeliest arm the wireless-expert had ever seen, held out a cup of vodka—96%. It smelled like the back-room in a Bowery saloon, and for a moment the sleepy expert thought that he was dreaming. But the cup came forward, and the smell increased. He held out his hand and touched the cup—took it—swallowed the contents— coughed—gasped—and passed it back for more.
"Pinch me when it's over!" he said in a level voice. "But not until it's over!"
It was not without reason that Dick had hesitated when Jenison first came to him with an outfit of fifty men, half of them white. He had not doubted Jenison; he bad read him, understood him, liked him, trusted him, and shaken hands. It had been Jenison's following that gave him pause, and the very thoroughness of his subsequent precautions to keep the fifty-man contingent separate from the rest now helped the Princess. For nobody stopped to chat at the wagon, or to ask questions. Nobody saw the Persian woman climb up by a wheel and spring inside. Nobody heard the argument that followed.
"Gimme summore!"
"Send me a message first!"
"Uh-uh! Gimme summore, kid! Pass the bottle!"
"Give me a pencil and some paper. So. I will write a message—you will send it— then you shall have as much as you can drink."
"Pass the bottle here! Come on, I'm thirsty!"
"No. I will give you a little more—there—now—no, that is all! Now give me the pencil and paper—thank you!"
From somewhere under her Persian dress the Princess drew a little book that was identical with that taken by Dick from the General's belongings. Carefully, but with a speed that proved her long familiar with the code, she wrote out a message in a clear, bold hand.
"Send this," she said quietly.
"Gimme another drink, that's a good girl!"
"First send this."
"Send what? What is it? Send it where?"
"Call P-P-L. Keep on calling P-P-L."
Automatically almost, the man dispatched the signal-number that she gave "him, and from overhead the wires crackled that had been silent all afternoon.
Dick Anthony, passing up and down the horse-lines, heard the crackling and turned his head. Then it occurred to him that the man in the wagon must be acknowledging signals. He went on examining the horses, being satisfied that the wireless-expert would write down anything that came. But the crackling continued, at a growing pace, and Dick grew uneasy.
Presently he left the horses, and went striding across camp in a hurry. He had to pass the Princess' tent to reach the wireless-wagon. He saw the sentry leaning on his rifle half-asleep; he went near enough to smell the fellow's breath, and then he opened the tent-flap to find nobody inside. And still the wires up over the wagon crackled like burning thorns!
THE nearest man was the sentry. Dick seized him by the scruff of the neck and shook him until he dropped his rifle—until the cartridges fell out of his bandolier—until the world became to him a futurist affair of streaky parallels, without sense, purpose or stability—shook him until the fumes of vodka left the inside of his skull, and nothing much was left to him at all except desire to breathe and to obey.
"Go and get Jenison amelikani!" ordered Dick, giving the American the title bestowed on him by the Afghans of his command.
"Where?"
"Find him! Bring him!"
The man reached for his rifle, but Dick set his foot on it. The man reached for cartridges, to refill his bandolier, but Dick's attitude was eloquent and he started off toward the artillery lines just in the nick of time to avoid a kick that would have lifted him well forward on his journey. Dick picked up the rifle, beckoned a passing non-commissioned man, and ordered rifle and cartridges all taken to the guard-tent.
"When their owner comes to claim them," he ordered, "refuse him. Hand him over to the officer commanding the baggage-train, with orders to use him as a mule!"
"To hear is to obey!"
"It had better be!" said Dick.
Then Dick saw Jenison, and timed himself to meet the American exactly abreast of the wireless-wagon. The crackling had ceased, and a face that peered through an opening to see if all was clear, drawing back again as he approached.
"Hullo, Jenison!" he called.
"Hullo! What's new?"
"A change of plan, that's all. Sha'n't start for a few days—very likely three days, and perhaps four."
"But why? Man, why in thunder not?"
"Several reasons," Dick assured him, looking so gloomy and speaking so gloomily that Jenison stepped closer to get a better look at him. And yet Dick raised his voice.
"There's news of reinforcements coming on to join us from the rear, for one thing. Some reports say five thousand infantry—well worth waiting for. For another thing, the horses are badly done up—need a rest to be any good at all."
"Mine aren't," vowed Jenison. "The gun-teams are good for a hundred miles!"
"The guns can't go on alone," said Dick, speaking so distinctly that Jenison grew nervous and looked about him for fear they might be overheard. "And besides, the men won't march until they've had a rest and cut up the loot between them. I'm rather counting on the arrival of the reinforcements to put new ginger in them."
Jenison stared blankly, dropping his lower jaw a fraction of an inch, for this was not the Dick Anthony the Resolute, of whom he had heard when in Teheran, whom he had led fifty men to seek, under whom he had fought, and whom he had learned to admire more than any other mad on earth. This was an ordinary person speaking, some mere victim of circumstance and whim. He could have done better himself than sit down in a mud-puddle in the rain, to wait while the men changed their minds.
"Man, we're lost if we wait a day! We must move!"
"We'd be lost if we had a mutiny," said Dick.
"D'you mean—"
"Come to my tent, and I'll convince you!" Dick took Jenison and led him along.
WHILE they squelched through fifty or sixty yards of mud Dick strode in silence, never once looking to the right or left. Then, "What's that noise?" demanded Jenison. "News of my change of plan going to Baku! That's your wireless-expert sending a message for the Princess, saying that we'll wait here three or four days because the men won't march!"
"Nonsense!"
"Fact!" Dick assured him. "No, she isn't in her tent. I came from there. I gave her the vodka myself with which she bribed your man."
"On purpose to bribe him?"
"No. That part was unintentional. It was my oversight, so your man sha'n't be shot. Ah! Here's Usbeg Ali—Usbeg Ali, get a move on! We start in an hour, and sooner if you can!"
"Whither, bahadur?"
"Baku!"
The Afghan saluted.
"Go and get your guns away, Jenison!"
Jenison too saluted, and the act seemed to give him pleasure.
"Has the man gone to Teheran with the key of that box?" asked Dick.
"Surely," said Usbeg All.
"Then let me have that ten-man escort now, instead of tomorrow morning."
"In five minutes they shall be here, bahadur."
"Don't want 'em here! Send 'em to the wireless-wagon. Let 'em take the drunken man who's is there, and the Princess too if she's in there. If the Princess isn't in there, let 'em take her from her tent and escort both to Teheran together. Be sure that the Princess takes her steel box when she goes!"
"Is that all, bahadur?"
"That is all," said Sick. "Do that. Send word to the rear for the mounted men to close in and follow up—and then lead off. I'm going to bum whatever we can't take with us. The main thing is to hurry. Send Andry Macdougal to me if you see him anywhere. That's all, Usbeg AIL"
So the Afghan saluted, clicked his heels together, and was gone.
NO bugle or trumpet blew to herald Dick's start on a raid that was more daring than any in the greatest war in history. It was the blare of Andry's bagpipes, coaxing the half-drilled infantry into time and step, that set the pace and proclaimed the raid's true character.
Many and many a handful has won fame by holding a pass, or by fighting a good rear-guard action against ten times its number, just as many a nation has won infamy by swarming armed into the territory of a lesser power.
But it has not happened often, except when Scotland raided England, that the lesser—say eight thousand—has dared invade the greater. It was sheer, stark, laughing madness, and every man who sploshed through the mud behind Dick Anthony that afternoon in time to "The Campbells are Comin'" knew it—knew that Russia's millions lay over the border beyond, and that nothing less than genius could save them from utter destruction!
Not a man marched sadly. Not a man but believed Dick Anthony the one man in a million with brains and spunk enough to turn the trick. Even the wounded, left in a body at the first village and not overconfident of being fed, shouted encouragement until the last of the rear-guard rode by.
Even the trace-men, hauling beside the horses to help Jenison's guns along, hauled with a will and needed no urging. Night shut down on a muddy eight thousand that marched and marched and marched, and thought only of the goal ahead; on an Andry whose cheeks ached from the blowing; on an Usbeg Ali Khan five miles ahead, whose brown eyes pierced the gloom, with a screen of spaced-out scouts on either hand of him; and on a red-headed, bare-headed Dick who rode not at all like a man in a dream, but like a man who is conscious of his danger and entirely master of it.
The cold rain came down on them again, driving in torrents into their faces and burdening the infantry beneath the extra weight of wetted clothing. Yet, the mile-long columns laughed, tossing new jokes from company to company; for the Persian of the North is a stout, good man for all his rulers, his religion and his weaknesses, and Dick had called up the stoutness from its slumbering depths. Most of all they joked about the Princess Olga Karageorgovich, whom many of them had seen sent southward surrounded by ten men. They joked as the East does always, without what the West calls decency.
Dick, except when some ribaldry or other passed him wind-whipped from the gun-tails back to the squelching infantry, did not even spare a passing thought for any woman in the world—neither for Marie Mouquin, sitting propped upright by cushions in a wagon at the rear straining her ears to catch Andry's bagpipe-music, nor for Marie's former mistress.
BUT the Princess was thinking of both maid and Dick, when she was not storming at the Persian horsemen who escorted her at Dick's command. The horsemen were not at all in love with the notion of riding away from the scene of Dick's next operation, and she worked with a will and a forked tongue to make them less so; but tongue-work did not prevent her from thinking furiously. Speech with her never represented more than what she had thought; her true thoughts were ever secret to herself, unexpressed except in ceaseless watchfulness.
She laughed once or twice in memory of her "I surrender!" and of Dick's ready belief. Never, never, never would she surrender so long as she had breath, whatever mere words might be made to seem to say! She had set her tigress' heart on pick when she first set eyes on him and, ruined or triumphant, she would fight to own him while she had breath, if only for obstinacy's sake, and cunning's.
So she was in no mood to be hustled down to Teheran. When Dick determined first to send her there the idea had suited her finely, for she thought herself at the uttermost end of her resources. Protection from the British Government would have given her breathing space in which to plan new activity.
But communication with the Russian General and discovery of the wireless-plant had changed all that. She had been able to notify the Russian Government of the whereabouts of those most important, most incriminating plans; and that had shown her a less passive, therefore a more acceptable course to take.
The plans were worth more to Russia than to England, almost infinitely more. She stood to gain almost infinitely more by following Dick and getting them, to bargain with them afterward, than by telling the British representative at Teheran of maps that had been in Dick's hands but were now recaptured by Russia.
She had notified Russia of Dick's raid, repeating faithfully his talk of not starting for three or four days, to learn directly afterward that Dick had fooled her. Then it was time to act desperately. Her violet eyes gleamed at the thought of the revenge she would have on Dick for what she called his "treachery," until the drunken wireless-expert who clung to a horse beside her saw how beautiful she was and tried to make love to her.
He called her "Baby-doll!"
She back-handed him across the face, and there must have been some hard covering on her knuckles, for the blood ran in his eyes, and since he could not spare a hand from clinging to the saddle he could not wipe it out nor see.
The rain that swept into the face of Dick and his men chilled the spines of her escort and took out of them whatever little gusto for the homeward road they might have had. A village in which fires burned and men sat over the supper-pots appealed to them more than a night of floundering through mud, and a chat with the headman served to introduce them to an empty square building, built of wood, in one corner of which there was a six-by-six-foot cupboard of a place, tight-boarded off, with a heavy door.
They pushed her into the corner-room, with a bowl of food, and dropped the crossbeam into place that would keep her in there until it suited them to ride on next day.
Of the drunken man they took small notice. The departing fumes of vodka, unaccustomed exercise, and nervousness all had helped undermine his consciousness and he slept now, as a child does when fatigued, utterly oblivious to everything. They tossed him into a corner and left him there, while they busied themselves with supper; and it was very nearly midnight when the last of them wiped the cold fat out of his beard and rolled into his warm blanket, after making very sure that the outer door was bolted tight.
NOBODY heard the gnawing, like a great rat's, that might have been heard within the Princess' enclosure; and the man whose knife she had sneaked out of his belt did not miss it, or if he did miss it he supposed it shaken out somewhere on the road behind. The village was wrapped in the dead slumber of the overeating sensuous East, and nothing moved but the village dogs that howled at the dismal wet, when the drunken American, sobered by the night chill, crawled around the room by the wall and lifted the heavy bar that served as door-bolt.
A gallon of cold rain, wind-gathered from the roof, splashed on him the moment he pushed the door open; but inside was the stink of unwashed men asleep, and outside the night smelled clean. He closed the door behind him, to receive a knife, up-driven, below his ribs that let the life out of him before he had time to groan. The knife was dulled by hours of hacking at tough wood, but the Princess' delicately molded wrist was like steel wire under her velvet skin.
There was a big beam outside as well as inside; the Princess swung it down and struck it three times with her hand to make sure it was tight in its niche; then, from under the veranda that ran around three sides of the building she dragged out a can of Russian kerosene that she had seen them stow there before they locked her in her room. She dragged it past two sides of the building through the yielding, sound-swallowing mud until she reached the hole she had hacked for herself. Then she dragged it through the hole and went in search of fire.
Matches are a common enough article of trade on the Caspian shore, but men still keep fire in little earthen pots, and she found a pot hanging from a roof-beam of the veranda. She climbed through her hole again with it, and came hurrying out a moment later to run swiftly for the stables where fifteen or sixteen horses moved restlessly.
She did not wait to pick the best horse, but sprang on the first and sent him careering out of the village, riding bare-back with a halter for a bridle. Shouting behind her warned her that men were awake; a glance over her shoulder satisfied her that the men were busy, for red flames roared already skyward, turning the rain to white steam to be colored yellow and crimson and sent billowing up again. She laughed as she struck the horse with the steel box, that was all she owned of anything at all. She laughed again as she worked the horse around until he was headed northward in the wake once more of Richard Anthony of Arran!
Thenceforward for a few days, 'though she fought with cruel weather, her progress was comparatively easy. The rain was a screen that saved her from being seen; and those who travel in the wake of a hurrying army have no need ever to go hungry or ride over-slow. A hundred could have picked a living from the leavings.
Twice she changed horses, once stealing a remount from a village where Dick had left two hundred tired mounts in exchange for a hundred and twenty fresh ones. The tired mounts were well rested, and she stole the best of them at night. The second time, she took the mount of one of Dick's rear-guard who had stopped at a village to rest himself and maybe—soldierwise—find what he could find. He found a foundered horse without saddle or bridle in exchange for his own well-cared-for beast.
Slipping between the extended ranks of the rear-guard was a work of art, though not so difficult as might appear at first thought. The rear-guard were looking out for considerable bodies, on the assumption that the Russians might have an armed force somewhere oh the flank that might slip by and cut communications from the rear.
To a wet-through woman, dressed in ragged Persian clothes but mounted on a good horse, it was mostly a matter of caution and wakefulness to get by, but once or twice she was stopped and questioned, and then she had to act.
None could act better. None would have dared act so many parts as she did. She played in turn on their superstition, on their greed, on their credulity; she told their fortunes, pretending to be a Gipsy woman, and speaking a dialect that might have been almost any brand of bastard Persian. Once she recalled the legend about Dick's being Alexander of Macedon come to life again to lead Persia to salvation, and she posed as a frenzied prophetess with her long hair streaming out behind her and her wonderful eyes ablaze with fervor.
AT last, in the rain of a desperate night, coughing as if her sides would shake apart, she slipped by Dick's farthest-placed picket, and was brought to a stand by the picket next beyond.
"Howt!" roared a Persian, with his finger crooked on a trigger that he had adjusted to his light-touch fancy; and she was too far gone—too wet and tired and weak, too ill—too dazed to disobey him and take another chance.
He strode toward her, pounced on her, dragged her to her feet and marched her with a bayonet at her back to his corpora], who sent her, with another man to help, post-haste to Dick. And Dick was snatching part of the four hours of sleep that be allowed himself. He came from his tent savage at the interruption, holding a lantern above his head and peering forward. She flung herself in the mud at his feet.
"Dick! Oh Dick! Dick Anthony!"
A hurricane of coughing checked her speech, and she clutched at the mud with struggling fingers until Dick stooped down and raised her, swearing softly to himself. Then she flung herself into his arms and clung there, coughing, smearing him with mud from shoulder down to heels.
She said something to him between bursts of coughing, and he bent his head to listen; so she kissed him, and laughed until the laughter turned to coughing again, and she drove her little steel fingers into his flesh in a paroxysm of pain.
Dick picked her up in both arms, for there was nothing else that a gentleman could do, and carried her into his tent, calling to the orderly to follow him. Then, while the orderly watched her and she drank the soup that had been made ready against Dick's waking, Dick went to a wagon and had room made for her on a mattress stowed between the stores.
After that he had her carried to the wagon, and a Persian woman from Marie Mouquin's staff of nurses was sent to wait on her. A dozen men were told off to march by the wagon, three on either side, three behind and three in front, and then Dick mounted his own charger to see to the resumption of the march.
He was very close to the Russian border now, and his numbers had been swelled by the addition of Persians trained by Russian officers, who deserted to him as he marched northward. There was nobody who could work the wireless for him and he had left it behind, smashed into uselessness; but Usbeg Ali and his scouts were busy, and the natives of the villages he passed were all in sympathy with him, so that he had food for his men and did not need to waste men on foraging parties or in protective raids.
And there were many natives who were so in touch with Russia that they could tell him of what was passing beyond the border. He knew now beyond any doubt at all that even living man in uniform who could be mobilized was being hurried westward to the frontiers where Austria and Germany were snatching the advantage given them by ability to mobilize more quickly.
Time being an enormous factor in the situation, every railway-line, single or double tracked, was blocked to capacity with trains all going one way; the roads were blocked with automobiles of every kind, crowded with men.
Dick was told twice by men who should have known, for they were merchants doing business in corn and fodder with the Russian Government, that practically nothing had been done to oppose him. Men refused to believe in Russia that he was a real danger. He could not even hear of an aeroplane that had been spared to use against him; all the heavy guns, and all the more modern appliances of war were on the way to the front or there already.
They told him that even the four troop-trains had so upset the schedule that the provision-trains and oil-trains out of Baku were in almost inextricable confusion. And on every hand Dick was assured that nobody in Russia believed he had more than a handful with him.
"They have been told by wireless that I am coming, and with how many," Dick assured them.
"No. That can not be. The rumor is that you gave the slip to the ten thousand sent against you. The government depends on that ten thousand turning and catching you from behind!"
DICK sent for the Princess, and they carried her to him on a litter for she seemed too weak to stand.
"What was the wireless message you persuaded that man to send?" he demanded.
She laughed at him, until a fit of coughing seized her.
"Bribe me!" she said when the coughing was done, and Dick thought swiftly of a way to bribe her.
"Kiss me," she said, "and I'll tell you, for my time is short, Dick Anthony!"
She laughed again then, merrily for a wonder, until the coughing resumed. Any woman would have laughed at the sight of Dick's strong face betraying weakness, irresolution, worry, distaste, every sign of all the qualities he held in greatest disregard!
"Kiss me," she said again, "and I'll tell you, Dick!"
There are men by the million to whom a kiss more or less under almost any circumstances means nothing, or at most means a momentary flutter of the heart. But men do not rise to Dick's height, nor are their deeps like Dick's, who hold their lips lightly either in speech or touch. The words that left Dick's lips were such as he would stand or fall to prove; and since his mother died he never had kissed a woman, for the all-sufficient reason that he had not loved one.
To his decent mind, with its ticketed, docketed clean-cut facts and clear-drawn theories, a kiss was the outward and visible sign of love. And he did not love the Princess. The argument was as clear and positive to him as the better-known and more generally accepted one that two times two are four.
Yet the Princess seemed to him to be dying, and there were many of his men, who swore that they knew the symptoms, who assured him she was dying. To kiss a dying woman at her own request was not such a very ungentlemanly thing. Jenison rode up through the blackness to ask for orders and to gather information if there were any. And Jenison was a man with a punctilious sense of honor; Dick felt relieved that Jenison should overhear.
"Kiss her!" said Jenison, and turned away.
And yet Dick did not kiss her. Naked, he could have faced and felt red flame that minute without wincing to help this or any woman. Kiss her he could not.
Usbeg Ali Khan, fierce-bearded and fierce-eyed, came cantering from the front to talk with Dick about stories told him by some villagers. He halted ten yards away, seeing that Dick was engaged, and a Persian who knew enough English to interpret what was passing told the Afghan all about it.
So Usbeg Ali, with an Afghan oath on his lips that aught to have.peeled the skin from them, strode into the lantern-light; and what he had to say was so altogether Eastern in its point of view and so completely scandalous that the Princess winced on her cushioned litter, and Dick ordered him away without ceremony.
"Get out into the night with the other dogs!" growled Dick; and the Afghan went, realizing that he had made some awful blunder and wondering what it was.
Andry came, tremendous and solicitous, as he always did whenever there was a halt of any long duration. Silent as a rock he stood behind Dick, and he heard the Princess coaxing.
"Afraid, Dick Anthony of Arran? No? If you're not afraid to kiss me, I'm not afraid to tell! Try me and see!"
"Kiss her, Mr. Dicky; it won't hurrrrt ye!" advised Andry. But Dick would not. Feeling in his pockets restlessly with fists that itched to help Dick out of his embarrassment, but without the least idea of how to do it, Andry felt a ball of paper and began to crumple it tighter automatically. Then for a reason that he never could explain he found his tongue and began to speak of unimportant things. "Mr. Dicky!"
"Yes."
"Ye mind ye gave me orrrrders tae smash yon wireless-wagon 'way back behind?"
"Yes."
"Wull—I smashed it."
"Well?"
"Before I broke the apppparrratus up intae leetle bits, I found a wee bit paper."
"Well?"
"I hae it here."
"What of it?"
"This is her."
HE dropped the crumpled ball of paper into Dick's open palm, and Dick—uninterested but relieved by anything that took his mind for a moment from the problem—began to uncrumple it. He smoothed it out and held it toward the lantern, and Andry all but jumped in spite of his proud Scots phlegm when he saw the sudden change in Dick's face and sensed the turn affairs had taken.
"What is it, Mr. Dicky?"
But Dick was too busy to answer him. Spread on his knee was the coded message that the Princess had bribed the American to send, and Dick's hand was busy searching in an inside pocket for the little book be had found among the General's effects.
The Princess stared hard and tried to rise and snatch the message, but Andry saw her in time and his huge bulk intervened. The Princess sank to her couch again. Dick's fingers moved like lightning through the pages of the little book, as word by word he decoded the penciled message.
He began to smile and his eyes quite lost the strained look they had worn. He even hurried less in his search for the meaning as he neared the bottom of the sheet, and at last he reached the line added at the bottom after the coded signature, that told of his change of plan, of the planned three or four days' delay, and of Dick's supposed fear of a mutiny.
"Tell me," said Dick, leaning forward suddenly and addressing the Princess, "why did you say nothing of my having defeated your ten thousand men?"
"They were never my ten thousand!"
"Why did you say nothing of my having defeated them?"
The Princess coughed for about two minutes, shook her head apparently in token that circumstances were too many for her, and decided in a whim of the moment to answer him.
"I agreed with the General not to."
"Why?"
"Why? Is it not obvious?"
"Not in the least," said Dick.
"The General hoped that his men would rally and attack you from the rear. A defeated General is not persona grata in Russia. His best plan was to wait in the hope of a reverse to you that would set him free, and perhaps set him at the head of his own men again. He agreed to befriend me afterward, should circumstances favor him. We formed a partnership. It is never good to be dead until one ceases breathing! So I go without my kiss?"
She said the last six words in a tone of disappointment that was new and rang more genuine than anything Dick had heard her say. There was a note of resignation in her voice that could scarcely have been acted.
"I would really have told you, had you paid the price I asked. And it was not a very high price. Tell them to carry me away."
Dick arose and stepped toward her litter.
"You shall have your price!" he said, and he knelt beside her as if she had been an angel and he a suppliant for grace. Under the eyes of Andry and a dozen wondering Persians he bent over her and kissed her on the lips, and she threw her arms around his neck, sobbing and stuttering:
"Dick—Dick! Oh Dick! There was never a day when I would not have died for you! Kiss me again, Dick, for I'm dying!"'
So he kissed her again, and then bent her arms back and released himself.
"Take her back to her wagon!" he ordered, and four men raised her Litter.
"Good-by Dick! Thank you, Dick!" she called.
But Dick did not answer. He was rubbing his lips with the back of his hand, with his back toward her.
"Andry!" he ordered suddenly. "Get word to Jenison and Usbeg Ali Khan to hurry on at once!"
They picked up the Princess to carry her away, but she called to Dick again.
"For that," she said, "just for that, Dick Anthony, I am your friend!"
THE Russo-Persian is not at all like the Russo-German or the Russo-Scandinavian border. Almost nowhere can you lay your finger on the spot where Russia begins and Persia ends, for it has been part of the deep game Russia has played for years to make the border-line a thing of mystery, to be argued about and trespassed over at intervals. The inhabitants of the contiguous villages on either side are much alike, have intermarried, trade with one another, and unite in being whole-heartedly opposed to Government from either Petersburg or Teheran. They are convinced "home-rulers" who have little scruple as to the means employed for reaching the end in view; and they swung into line behind Dick Anthony, if not physically, at least with all the mental and moral support that he could wish.
He had no money, but they let him take whatever he wanted for his men without opposition; for they argued that the Russian Government would have to foot the bill. They would have been lunatics had they accepted Dick's receipts, or promises to pay, for in that case the goods would have been sold and they would have had no claim against any one except Dick Anthony; and nobody quite believed that Dick could do more than raid and run away again.
So the burst over the border, wherever the border might be, began auspiciously, and but for occasional little Cossack scouting-parties who fell away as Dick advanced, and here and there a few Russian or Russian-trained police who bolted on sight incontinently, there was nothing to impede Dick's progress.
He went into Russia like a whirlwind, doing no more damage than to burn the telegraph-poles and a few bridges over which an active enemy might possibly have hurried to cut him off.
He seemed reckless of his rear, of lines of communication, of anything and everything except the goal ahead. And that the goal was Baku became evident even to the camp followers long before he reached there.
His genius had detected Russia's weakness in the one spot where she was weak at that instant. Every preparation Russia had ever made had been for advance southward and eastward. It had never entered the heads of Russian schemers that Persia might some day awake out of anarchy and lethargy, pour men over the border and strike at the heart of a fat Lieutenancy.
Roads, railways, harbors, all had been designed with a view to moving forward one way; and now that ever)' channel of communication had been blocked by troops and stores traveling the other way, the Lieu* tenancy of the Caucasus as well as Baku lay at Dick's mercy. And Dick was swift.
His chief problem was to get ammunition for the six field-guns that Jenison commanded, and that worried him more than anybody guessed until they brought him word that just where the railway dips to the south before turning north again to Baku there was a battery waiting to join issue with him, flanked by infantry and some horse.
He got word of it a little after dawn, By midday he had cut the railway line and burned the telegraph-poles to the westward of where the Russians waited, and therefore on the side on which they were sure he never would appear. He turned the track into a Chinese puzzle of twisted steel, as he marched westward instead of east. His back was to Baku, and Baku was his goal, but there were "eyes in the back of his head."
HE marched due westward, in no hurry, until dark; and the Russians got behind him to cut off his retreat. That night he made a ten-mile line of bonfires, all of railroad-material, telegraph-poles and ties; and leaving the bonfires well alight he marched east again, and fell on the Russians before their scouts could bring them word that the fires were an empty ruse.
He caught them on the flank, and again from the side on which they were certain he would not come; and before the Russian guns could form to give battle—before one round was fired—Usbeg Ali Khan with a thousand men had swept down on them under cover of black darkness and had put them out of action. Jenison had twelve full wagon-loads of ammunition before the night was four hours old, and the Russian guns lay useless—smashed.
"Follow it up!" urged Usbeg Ali. "Pursue until they are scattered and can not form again!"
"Rest!" urged the infantry. "We are weary men, and we have won for you! Now let us rest!"
But Dick gave a nod to Andry, and the pipes droned out their clamor to be up and away and doing.
"On to Baku, now!" commanded Dick; and at dawn they lay down to sleep in sight of Baku, while Dick watched through his glasses the signs of panic that the appearance of a hostile force so near the city was bound to start in a population that is mixed of all the nationalities of the Levant, Asia Minor and the Caucasus.
The troops had gone west already; there was only a guard considered great enough to protect the oil-wells and the pipes that carry the lighter refined oils from Baku across the neck of land to Batum on the Black Sea. Dick bivouacked across the pipe-line.
Already not a tank-train of the heavier oil could move out of Baku; the little peninsula, on which the city and the oil-wells are, stood cut off from the rest of Russia, and Dick could cut the pipelines when he chose.
"D'you see the idea?" he asked Jenison.
Jenison nodded.
"Remember, I said we could paralyze 'em?"
"Yes."
"See that distillery over there? Yes—you can just make it out from here—take the glasses—see it?"
"Yes."
"They're depending on that for the gasoline supply of the biggest army that ever went into the field. This is a war of gasoline, this European war. They're using it for everything—flying-machines, transport, submarines, aide-de-camps—everything. They won't use a horse where a motor-car can be made to go.
"I want you to figure out the range, Jenison, as exactly as you can, from that gasoline-distillery to the raised ground on our left. We're going to take position on the raised ground—or at least you are—when the men have had one hour's sleep."
"Why not now?" asked Jenison, who believed his national luck was due to a habit of doing things without delay.
Usbeg Ali, riding up uninvited as he had a right to do, overheard him.
"Why? Why? Why?" he growled in English insolently. "Does a soldier ask why when a Dee-k-Anthonee gives orders?"
He dismounted, since he did not want a caution from Dick about sparing his charger when possible, and, tossing his reins to a trooper who had followed him, swaggered between Dick and Jenison, giving the American his back, a slight so evident that it was amusing.
Either Dick did not notice, or else he pretended not to notice; he was staring through his glasses again. He probably heard Andry tramp up, for Andry marched like a company of infantry; but he took no notice of Andry either.
JENISON stepped around until he faced the Afghan. He had had more than enough of insolence. Coming from a land where men draw a color-line more closely than it is drawn in the older world, he considered he had done wonders in recognizing Usbeg Ali Khan as his superior in rank. He decided that the minute had come when an understanding on that point had better be reached if ever.
Andry, all grin and wrinkles, watched through weathered eyes that took in every point of the situation. He held no brief for either, for though he drew no Jenison color-line he had suffered none the less under the hectoring, and domineering of what he was pleased to call a "black mon." He would have liked to see Usbeg Ali humbled just for once, however much he admired the swarthy horseman's skill.
And he was jealous of Jenison—plain, ordinary Scots jealous. He knew where every roll of fat was to be found in Jenison's anatomy, and his fighting-eye sought each spot now in turn, as he wondered where the Afghan would land first.
"You and I had better reach an understanding," Jenison began in a voice that was level as he could keep it.
Four feet away, Dick Anthony took not the slightest notice.
"I understand that I am second-in-command!" said Usbeg Ali swiftly. "That is enough!"
"Not quite enough," said Jenison. "I don't suppose you know what manners are, but you know what a beating is. If you offend me again I'll beat you!"
"Tut-tut!" muttered Andry, loud enough for Dick and the other two to hear. "A' talk an' no fechtin', like twa bairns baith feared o' t'ither!"
Dick surely heard; but he just as surely watched through his glasses what was passing on the outskirts of the city, and said nothing.
"Allah!" The exclamation was part amazement, but the greater part was bellicose threat. The Afghan's black beard bristled, as he bared his teeth in an unlovely grin. They were fine, white teeth, and Jenison's knuckles itched.
"Bahadur!" said Usbeg Ali, understanding nothing of the western code that prohibits "squealing," but sure of his rights and sure of Dick's support of them.
"Well?" asked Dick as if he had heard nothing. He returned the binoculars to their sling-case, and turned about to face the three. "What is it?"
"This one—" the Afghan pointed a finger at Jenison—"threatens he will beat me!"
"Why?" asked Dick.
"Because—by the blood of Allah—am I second-in-command, or am I not?"
"You are—at present!" Dick assured him, and Usbeg Ali's bluster seemed to lose its vim. "Why did he threaten he would beat you? On what condition?"
"If I offended him!"
"Why offend him?"
"But—"
Dick's strange eyes looked down at the Afghan's, and the strength of his face seemed scarcely human as he waited for an answer. But there was no answer.
"I—I would offend nobody! I—"
"Do you see that rising ground—over there to the left—four miles away?"
"Certainly I do! My eyes are not out of action!"
"Take a thousand men there—seize the best position you can find, and hold it! Scout carefully and thoroughly. Make ready to protect the guns as soon as they get there. Go!"
With a salute that would have passed muster for an obeisance, Usbeg Ah stepped backward and sought his horse. Dick turned on Jenison As the Afghan's charger dug his toes into the earth in answer to the spurs Andry grinned again, for it was plain, as day to him that the American was next for a "first class dressin' doon."
"You offered to beat him, I think?" said Dick.
"I did," nodded Jenison.
"Have you been ten days with this force yet?"
"Nine," said Jenison.
"I've led it for six months—alone—with only a Scots servant to help out. I haven't beaten anybody, and I haven't needed to."
"I'm ashamed of myself," said Jenison.
"Will you rest your men one hour and then get your guns into whatever position Usbeg Ali has chosen for you on that rising ground?"
Jenison saluted.
"Yes sir!" he said; and as far as he could recall it was the first time he had called anybody "sir" since his school-days. He went after his horse with a distinct sensation that doing it had done him good. Dick turned on Andry.
"You great oaf!" he said savagely, and Andry winced. "You'd rather see your betters fight each other than prove yourself fit to serve under them! Get out of my sight! Go and present my compliments to the Russian General; tell him I want to talk to him. Present my compliments to the Princess and ask her to allow her guards to carry her here. Go!"
"Mr. Dicky—man—ye've no gude ground f'r—"
"Go!" growled Dick, and Andry went with a flea in his ear. He delivered his two messages with a politeness to the General and the Princess that he would have considered weakness half an hour gone. He forgot to remonstrate with Marie Mouquin, weak yet from the dagger-wound received from the Princess, who was sitting nursing the Princess for all the world as if the two had never been enemies. He even forgot to kiss his girl, or to try to kiss her.
He strode off to sulk at the head of his sleeping infantry, and he proceeded after twenty minutes of reflection to turn their dreams to nightmares. He could render a Highland lament on the pipes as few men can, and the woe of a bursting heart, of pride down-fallen, of self-pity, grief, and home-sickness wailed and skirled through his chanter until the dense-packed companies writhed in sleep, and dreamed in sympathy.
MEANWHILE a little procession wound its way to where Dick stood bareheaded, like a statue of resolution staring at what must be. Men carried a litter on which the Princess lay, the General walked beside it and Marie Mouquin walked behind.
They laid the litter near Dick's feet. Signing for a bundle of blankets to be brought, Dick sat down on them beside the litter and bent forward so that he might hear better what the Princess said. But he changed his mind on a sudden and passed his field-glasses to the General.
"Take a look!" he said curtly. "Take a good look!"
The General did as be was told, with eyebrows expressing wonder that he should be expected to see anything worth looking at in the neighborhood of Baku, the abominable. As Dick had suggested, he took a good look, and after two or three minutes the military significance of Dick's position dawned on him.
He watched Usbeg Ali and the scouts—made a mental note of the fact that they were scouting close to deep wells of sweet water, and on a hill that would afford an excellent advantage for artillery. It was not a high hill, it was little more than a bank, but there were no obstructions between it and—the General's eye followed a line that led to the gasoline-distillery.
"Get the hang of it?" asked Dick.
The General stroked his beard as be handed back the glasses. He looked down the length of Dick's little army, estimating it, and then again at Baku, But he did not answer.
"I know from scouts and spies," said Dick, "that there are not enough trained men in Baku, counting those that I defeated last night, to give me much trouble."
The General, still stroking his beard, shut his lips tight, as if there had been some temptation to retort.
"And it will take four days at the least," continued Dick, "for the army that has gone westward to turn and attack me."
"But then it will be all up with you!" said the General. "I imagine our people will be decidedly out of patience. I am sure you must be cut off already from retreat in any direction. You will do well to revel in your last few days of life, Mr. Anthony!"
Dick ignored the pleasantry; it was not even possible to tell that he had heard it. He stooped over the Princess.
"I'm sending into Baku now," he said. "You'd better tell me what creature comforts you want most, and I'll do what I can to have them brought to you."
She coughed until the litter shook and the General turned his head away. Dick signed to Marie Mouquin and the maid came forward.
"Make out a list of what she most needs!" ordered Dick.
So Marie Mouquin, who had been the Princess' maid for so many years that she knew what to write down almost without giving thought to it, made out a little list and handed it to Dick. Dick gave it to the General. And the General dropped his jaw until the gold filling of his back teeth showed.
"Take it into Baku!" ordered Dick.
"Do I understand—?"
"I propose to explain what you are to understand!"
Dick was eying him in a way that gave the lie at once to the Russian's first assumption; yet, it was possible that Dick was afraid under that mask of manliness, and it was not to be forgotten either that the General had a dignity of his own that was very far from dead.
"I am your prisoner," he said stiffly, "and you have my parole. But I refuse to lend myself to any scheme of yours."
"Here is your parole!" answered Dick, handing him a scrap of writing. The General received it back and tore it up.
"Bring him his sword!" commanded Dick, and some one ran for it. Dick stood in silence until the sword was brought, and, with an expression that was enigmatic, watched the General buckle it on. The General's face expressed nearly as many different emotions as there are.
"Understand me," said the General. "Returning me my sword doesn't bind me in any way."
"Get him a horse!" commanded Dick.
"I give you no promise whatever!" the General insisted. "If you set me at liberty, I shall do my best to bring you to account!"
"You have seen for yourself," said Dick, "that I can cut this pipeline when I choose. I can damage it to an extent that will take a long time to repair,"
"Useless, my friend!" said the General. He was growing jubilant as he realized that Dick was in a tight corner. "In Baku they have pipe enough ready to make a new line from sea to sea! Destroy the whole, and in a very little while there will be another one!"
"With nothing at all to send through it!" said Dick.
"How do you mean?"
THE question had scarcely left the General's lips when a trumpet sounded at the far end of Dick's line, and with a cracking of whips and a lot of noise six guns—once Russian—got under way behind Jenison, and wheeled until they headed for the rising ground where Usbeg Ali and his horsemen studied the lay of things.
Dick watched them, saying nothing, until guns, ammunition-wagons and the men to serve them had mounted the rise and taken a position pointed out to them by some one waiting on the spot. And since there seemed nothing better to be done the General watched them too. He could not help but notice that the muzzles of all six guns pointed straight at the distillery, and that Jenison was busying himself with sighting each of them. As Dick and the General watched, the black muzzles began to point upward, inches at a time, for the range was long.
Then they brought the General's horse, and Dick looked it over.
"Take it away! Bring him a better one!" he ordered.
The General began to look now more triumphant than he had done yet, for there were evidences that a force of some sort was about to march out of the city. There was dust rising above the lower buildings in a way that to a military man is unmistakable.
"Remember, I have promised you nothing!" he insisted.
"It is I who am promising!" said Dick. "It is your business to convey my promise. You have seen for yourself that I command the pipeline and the gasoline-distillery. I give you my word, as a soldier and a gentleman, that unless my demands are complied with before midday today I will bombard that distillery. In that case I wish it distinctly understood that I shall not rest until every oil-well and oil-tank in Baku is on fire. After that, I shall not care what happens."
"What are your demands?" the General asked.
"I will only make them through the senior British official in Baku, consul or whatever he is. He must come out here and talk with me, and unless you want immediate action from my artillery, the senior representative of the Russian Government had better come with him with authority to act!"
"I can not promise," said the General, with eyes still on the dust-clouds.
"It is I who promise!" answered Dick, turning to an orderly. "Gallop across and ask Mr, Jenison whether he has the range!" he ordered. Then he turned to another galloper. "Order Andry Macdougal to fall-in the infantry in column of companies!" With a long shrewd look at the dust above the distant roofs he turned then to the General again.
"Here's your horse. You'd better go. My card will reach there before you do; it will be my business-card, to show that, mean business. Understand me! I give them until noon, and not a minute longer! Good morning to you!"
WONDERING perhaps what his reception was likely to be, for a defeated Russian General is more likely than not to be sentenced to death by a court martial, the Russian rode away, trotting slowly until he had gone a quarter of a mile and then urging the horse into a gallop. Dick stooped beside the litter again.
"I'm sorry I must keep moving you," he said, "but you'll be better off on the top of that rise than you would be in the wagons and the dust. And I shall want you by me when the talk begins."
"D'you think they'll come and talk with you?" the Princess asked.
"I know they will!" Dick answered; and the Princess laughed at Mm, until a fit of coughing seized her, and Marie Mouquin had to kneel beside her and help her cling tight to life, as only one woman ever can help another by merely being woman and at hand.
Dick had the Utter gathered up and ordered the bearers to follow him.
"Order the infantry up that hill!" he said, and another galloper went thundering off to where Andry sat with bagpipes on Ms knees. Less than a minute later the strains of "Macgregor's Gathering" began to call to the leading company, and Andry, like a great oak leaning in the wind, led off with his pipes above his shoulder, playing:
The moon's on the lake, and the mist's on the brae,
And the clan has a name that is nameless by day,
Then gather, gather, gather, Grigalach!
Dick swung into the saddle and cantered ahead of the litter, halting by Jenison, who scratched a five-day beard and looked with pride at six gun-muzzles pointing skyward at angles which were mathematically perfect.
"At a word," he said, "I can blow that distillery to blazes!"
"Change the elevation of one gun, please," said Dick. "I want one shot— just one—sent straight over the distillery. I promised to send my card. Be sure you hit nothing. Fire when you like!"
Jenison attended to the card himself, stooping over the gun and laying it. In a moment the long black muzzle belched and a shell went whining over Baku, so straight for the distillery that for a moment Dick's heart was in Ms mouth. But Jenison had learned to know that gun; the direction was exact, but the shell landed and exploded in a roadway a quarter of a mile beyond the farthest tank.
BAKU the abominable—Baku the polyglot—Baku the un-warlike, that has suffered in so many wars, that has been taken and retaken and given back—Baku that bears witness of the Parsee fire-worship, beside Moslem mosques and Christian churches built on the ruins of old Arab forts—Baku the offensive, whose food and whose dust and whose breezes smell of crude petroleum, hummed like a hornet-hive.
For Richard Anthony of Arran was something new in its experience.
The Great War had seen its quarreling atoms all unite and be one in denouncing Germany. The conscripts had been summoned to the colors, and, since Baku is comparatively near to the seat of war, its contingent was among the first that marched through Poland. Then there had been overtime at the oil-wells and refineries, and prosperity was Baku's for a while, because gasoline was the life-blood of this modern army.
Half a million men, who had been held in readiness to snatch Persia from under the sleepy nose of Britain, marched with the rest and helped to clog the travel-routes. Baku was left undefended except for her police and a small force of last-call reservists. Even the ten thousand horsemen who were sent into Persia to account for Dick Anthony had not had instructions to return to Baku; they were to have hurried westward when their quarry had been caught and spoiled of the secret papers.
In Baku they had not taken Dick Anthony seriously. Men were too busy there with their problems of race and creed, of labor-unions that fought one another and a repressive government, of oil-output and oil-fires. Even when Dick had stolen a section of the Russian Caspian fleet, and with it had sunk the most of the remainder, he had been regarded as a lucky man whose doom was very near. Close press-censorship and the fact that most of what Dick did was unbelievable had made him a myth rather than a man whom the crowd must reckon with.
Regiment after regiment that had been sent against him had been beaten, for Dick had contrived to take them one by one; but the public had not known that, for the fighting took place in Persia, and the telegraph-wires were the Russian Government's in the intervals when Dick did not tear them down.
The fact that ten thousand cavalry must be spared to march against him had come as a great surprise. It was resented, for the crowd was at war-heat, furious with Germany, and for the first time in all history unanimous. But the ten thousand men and a General rode off, and were forgotten because of the other news that was so far less definite and therefore lent itself so infinitely much more to exaggeration.
A wireless message came, to the effect that Dick had given the ten thousand men the slip, and would march into Russia after four days. But the public and the press were not taken into confidence about it, and the four days were considered by Baku's Governor ample in which to find Dick, bring him to bay, and smash him.
A wireless request, supposed to be from the General, that he be reinforced with ten thousand men, was taken as proof positive that the General had marched too fast and far; that Dick was between him and Russia; and that he would like to catch Dick between two overwhelming forces.
"He has plenty of men!" said the Governor. "He shall explain when he gets back why he could not spare men to protect the wires!"
Nobody worried about Dick, even when the wireless ceased to speak of him. A small striking-force of cavalry, infantry and guns was got ready to go after him in case of the impossible happening; nobody believed he would ever cross into Russia. When a British official of very high degree arrived in Baku, to inspect the petroleum and gasoline supply and presumably to make arrangements on behalf of the British Admiralty, almost everything was forgotten in the heat of this new excitement.
The high official had a man with him who was said to be a lawyer, and who made most shrewd and pertinacious inquiries about Dick Anthony, but even his strings of questions interpreted by police-officials lent him by the Government failed to make Dick a living entity in their imaginations. To them Dick was a more or less fabulous bandit, somewhere over the border in a land that nobody cared about.
THEN, suddenly, here was Dick, red-headed, real, and awake, with a wonderful old claymore at his belt and six captured Russian cannon in his train. Here was the railway cut and burned. And Dick sat on the pipeline through which the precious oil-supply, that is Baku's only excuse for being, had to run! A beaten defending-force slunk into town without its guns or ammunition-wagons to announce him, and Dick followed them so fast that superstition awoke, and half the population swore he was not human.
There was panic. There was rioting, and there were very few troops with which to quell the mob. The dust that the General and Dick mistook for the sign of marching troops was churned up by the crowds that rushed to lynch the Governor. Had Dick known it, and had it been part of his plan, he might have marched into Baku almost unopposed and have sacked the place.
But even had he known it, it is unlikely that he would have diverged from his plan by a hair's-breadth, for his plan was good and there was more to be thought of than immediate gain. Persia would lose in the end by cutting a wound in Russia's flesh that would not heal. He sent in his ultimatum by a man who, though defeated and made prisoner, must be considered soldier enough to give a true account of the situation.
"Where are the plans you went to get with your ten thousand men?" he was asked, when they had saved him from the mob.
"He has them!"
"Where are your men?"
"Scattered to the four winds into Persia and dealt with in detail by the natives!"
"What has he sent you in for?"
"To name his terms!"
"What are they?"
So the General repeated what Dick Anthony had said to him, and gave them as well a fair account of Dick's resolution, and of the efficiency of his little army and its guns.
"The guns are all trained on the gasoline! he assured them. He gave them his word of honor on the point.
"What does he mean to demand?"
"I don't know!" said the General.
The British very-high-official was invited to attend, and the matter was explained to him. At mention of the name of Anthony his gray eyes confessed to something more than the mild interest that had been his utmost concession hitherto. There seemed to be almost laughter in his eyes; and he had to clear his throat before he could tell them he wanted the lawyer, White.
"White's looking for him, you know," he said. "Most extraordinary case. Word reached England from your Foreign Office to the effect that young Anthony was dead and buried at sea. His uncle, I understand, wasn't sorry to hear it. But now the uncle is dead, and young Anthony would be the heir if he were alive. Most extraordinary part of it is that our Minister at Teheran has written London to say that a man claiming to be Dick Anthony of Arran is at large in Persia.
"White is of Mervin, White and Melville who are the lawyers for the Anthony estate, and he asked leave to travel under my wing, so to speak, on this trip so that he might trace Dick if possible. I knew young Anthony fairly well myself. Would know him again out of a million. Never saw a man quite like him, or with quite his presence. Most astonishing young man. If that's Anthony out there, you may depend on it he means what he says! Better humor him!"
"But this is an act of war!" swore the Governor of Baku. "If he is an Englishman, England is answerable for this series of outrages he has committed!"
The British very-high-official drew into his shell with a completeness and rapidity that had taken him years to learn.
"Suppose you see what he has to say?" he suggested.
"He demands that the senior British subject in Baku go with me to meet him," said the Governor.
"Then I am undoubtedly the individual he means!"
"Will you go with me, if I go?"
"I am at your service. I suggest that White go with me."
So White was summoned, combing his mutton-chop side-whiskers with nervous fingers, yet giving the impression that a silk hat and a frock-coat were his rightful garb, and not altogether unpossessed of dignity.
"You see," said the Governor of Baku, as he rode by the side of the British very-high-official, with White and some half-dozen Russians in attendance—there was a white flag tied to a short pole with the party—"he has torn up the railway, and has fired on Baku. To treat with him is dangerous, for it is as good as to admit him a belligerent and not a bandit."
"That of course is your affair," the Englishman assured him. "I am merely here at your invitation."
"If only there were more time—time to wire for troops! But the railway-tracks are blocked for miles with troop and supply trains. There's no time to do anything!"
"As I remember them, both his father and Dick were always impetuous!" said the very-high-official unconsolingly.
They rode in silence side by side until Dick showed a white flag too from his eminence, and then the Englishman fell a yard or two behind.
Dick rode out to meet them, to escort them in person to the spot where the Princess lay on her roughly made litter.
"Did you bring any package for the Princess Olga Karageorgovich?" Dick asked.
"No," said the Governor curtly.
Dick halted.
"Would you care to send somebody back for it?" he asked.
"Gad! If that's not an Anthony I'll eat my horse!"
The very-high-official slapped his thigh, so that his horse was scared and sidestepped. Dick's eyes and his met, and Dick laughed aloud.
"Hullo, uncle Charles!"
"Hullo!" said the very-high-official; then he turned to White. "Recognize him, White?" he asked.
"That is Mr. Richard Anthony of Arran!" answered White.
"Oh hullo, White!" said Dick.
"My regards, sir! Glad to see you, Mr. Anthony!"
"About the Princess' package?" wondered Dick aloud, and as his official relative would have termed it, jibbing.
"I'll send a man back for what she wants. Let me see, wasn't there a list?" asked the Governor.
"There was," said Dick. "The General had it."
The Governor of Baku wrote a note on a sheet of paper torn from his pocket-book, and turning to one of his six attendants sent him galloping back to the city with it.
"NOW, follow me, please," said Dick, and he led the way at a canter to the summit of the rising ground. Then he sent at once for Jenison and Andry and Usbeg Ali Khan, and as each came he presented him. At Dick's order men brought a blanket and laid it on the ground not far from where the Princess lay. Dick felt inside his shirt and tossed a package into the middle of it. At another word from him, Andry and Usbeg Ali Khan each strode to the blanket and took stand beside it with a drawn sword in his hand.
"D'you recognize that?" asked Dick.
"No." said the Governor of Baku.
Dick looked hard at him, and the Governor stared back.
"Ask her!" advised Dick, pointing to the Princess who was being raised on pillows by Marie Mouquin. She seemed too weak even to rise into a sitting posture without help.
Frowning, for the Princess was in disgrace, the Governor stooped down beside the litter, and between long fits of coughing the Princess told him in Russian that the papers constituted proof—absolute, unqualified proof of Russia's intention to march half a million into Persia at a time when she was bound by treaty with Great Britain to do nothing of the kind.
"The map is there," she assured him, "and all the documents signed at headquarters, that give detailed instructions for the advance southward!"
The Governor stood up, eyed the package on the blanket and the two who guarded it, and drew out a cigar. He lit the cigar with a fusee, caught Dick's eye, and glanced along the lines of drawn-up infantry, that reached for half a mile on either hand. It was Usbeg Ali Khan who picked the red-hot fusee out of the papers and tossed it aside with a matter-of-fact air that would have done credit to an English butler.
"Do you know what the papers are now?" asked Dick.
The Governor of Baku nodded his head.
"Do you wish me to tell this gentleman—" Dick pointed to his uncle—"exactly what the papers are?"
"No!" said the Governor.
"Well," said Dick, "he shall see them unless we can come to terms."
"What are the terms?" asked the Governor.
"These," said Dick. "I am here on behalf of Persia. These men who have followed me are Persian patriots, who are in arms for the cause of Persia's freedom. In the presence of my uncle here, and witnessed by his signature, you are to give these men a written guarantee that Persian independence shall be always respected in the future. You are to agree to withdraw all Russian troops from Persia, and for all time, and to guarantee the integrity of the present boundary in perpetuity."
"I have no authority!" said the Governor.
"Then get it!" answered Dick.
"Impossible!"
Dick drew out a watch.
"At exactly thirty seconds after noon, by my lime, I shall begin to bombard that gasoline! Shall we compare watches?"
The Governor looked at the very-high-official whom Dick had called uncle, but the Englishman was staring steadily at the papers on the blanket. He seemed to be in a day-dream.
"Incidentally," said Dick, "I shall show my uncle those papers, unless—"
"Come!" said the Governor of Baku. "We will ride back!"
He bowed a polite invitation to the British official to precede him.
"No!" said Dick. "I refuse to subject a person of my uncle's political importance to the danger of a bombardment. He stays here!"
Jenison, holding his sides with laughter, began to squint along his gun-sights, one by one.
"Shall I have shrapnel ready, or common shell?" he asked.
"Both!" ordered Dick.
"I claim the protection of the Russian Government!" said Dick's uncle, with a face that owned positively no expression.
"I can do nothing without authority," said the Governor, "I should have to wire Petersburg, and you have torn down the wires!"
"Use your wireless!" ordered Dick; "But understand me; I begin to bombard at thirty seconds after twelve, unless—"
The Governor of Baku paced up and down a time or two irresolutely, glancing from Dick to his uncle, all down the lines of Dick's ready little army, and then at the city and its tanks of dangerous, precious fuel.
"It seems I must leave you here!" he said at last.
"I hold you responsible!" Dick's uncle hastened to assure him.
SO the Governor of Baku rode away, not as he had come, with dignity, but at a furious gallop; for the time Dick had granted him in which to communicate with Petersburg was none too long, and he had never been less doubtful in his life of the utter truthfulness of a threat. If there was any {certainty at all it was that Dick would begin bombarding at the second specified, unless his terms were accepted first.
"Well, young man," said Dick's uncle when the Governor had gone, "what's it all mean? How do you propose to clear yourself of a charge of brigandage? You've got the Governor of Baku cornered, but what about afterward?"
"I shall hurry home!" Dick assured him.
"And be charged with filibustering, brigandage, dacoity, and about ten more offenses!"
"No!" said Dick. "I'm dead! You can't try a dead man. If I come to life again, what I did when the law of England called me dead is my affair!"
His uncle whistled.
"As long as you're my prisoner," said Dick, "I'll make use of you. Let me present you to the Princess Olga Karageorgovich."
His uncle bowed, and the dying woman smiled. Between violent fits of coughing she told, at Dick's request since the memory of Dick's kiss was on her lips yet how she had tricked and trapped and driven Dick into Persia that he might be made an outlaw and provide excuse for a Russian invasion of the country. She omitted little, except the story of her frenzied love for Dick, and of her attempts to murder him.
"Could you drop your official rank for a minute or two?" Dick asked when the Princess bad finished.
His uncle nodded.
"Then, strictly sub rosa and unofficially, I'll let you look at those papers."
Andry picked them from the blanket and held them out. Dick's uncle glanced at them, studied the map for about a minute, whistled, and threw them back on the blanket.
"I'd rather not see any more," he said grimly.
"Are you official again?" asked Dick.
Again his uncle nodded.
"Then ask these men—" he pointed to Andry and to Usbeg Ali Khan, and then to Jenison—"whether I have done or permitted anything of which I, or my country for me, ought to be ashamed."
"They might be said to be accomplices!" his uncle smiled.
"But ask them."
"No," said Dick's uncle. "But if you'll let me, I would like to ask some questions of the rank and file."
"Help yourself!" said Dick. "Shall I interpret for you?"
"I learned Persian at Oxford, and spoke it in India before you were born, my boy!"
So Dick's uncle went alone along the lines of infantry and asked what he chose, listened to what he chose, and drew deductions unaided. What they told him none but he ever knew, but in addition to the nonsense about Dick being Alexander the Great come to life again they must have told a heap of truth; and since they were speaking to a man who knew his India, and the East through India's eyes, that very-high-official must have garnered more than one glimpse of what the real Dick looked like on campaign, of how Dick had behaved, and of what the men felt who loved him and tramped behind him.
When he walked back to be ready to meet the returning Governor his mere relationship and interest in Dick seemed changed to a regard that men do not put into words. Eye to eye, truth and recognition of the truth flashed back and forth between them.
"There's only one thing, then, I've got to add," said Dick. "I'm going to leave myself in your hands. You draw up an agreement with the Governor of Baku and I'll sign it over your signature. I insist on permission for Andry Macdougal, Usbeg Ali Khan and his seven personal followers, Mr. Jenison and his followers, and the Princess Olga Karageorgovich, as well as Andry's sweetheart Marie Mouquin, to go where they care to unmolested."
"How about yourself?"
"I? I shall lead these men back into Persia, of course."
"And afterward?"
"I shall go to England, and shall ask you for your influence toward getting me a regular commission."
"I promise it to you now, my boy!"
SO the convention between Dick and the Russian Government was drawn up by a practised hand, and the British Embassy was notified of it less than two hours later by wireless to Petersburg, for Dick's uncle saw to that. When the clocks of Baku struck the hour of noon the ink was not yet dry on the signatures.
By three that afternoon—without the Russian guns, which he gave up to the Governor of Baku—Dick was already on his way southward, riding at the head of an army that did not quite understand but was content to follow him. And Dick was not alone.
Jenison for one refused point-blank to leave him.
"There'll be nothing doing in my business until this war is over," he asserted. "I may as well make the best of it. If you'll let me, I'll come with you."
"Come on!" said Dick. "I like you."
So, Jenison and Dick work side by side at the new work that Dick has undertaken; and though he is American, and a man of business first and last, Jenison has forgotten his own business completely in his interest for Dick's.
Andry was given no alternative.
"Go home and join the army!" ordered Dick. "Buying your discharge to follow me gave you no moral right to stay away when war breaks out. Go home and enlist again. Marry your girl in Baku—there'll be a chaplain there—and take her home with you. When I get home I'll make provision for you. When the war's over, or you're wounded, come to Lamlash. If I'm not there, I'll leave word for you."
And Usbeg Ali Khan rode too with Dick, for as he said himself:
"I am a man of war, bahadur—born for the work of war. I think there will be ever fighting where thou goest, for there is ever a right and a wrong, and thou art so hot for the right that the wrong must fight or quit! I choose to go with thee. And my seven will follow me, because I call them."
THE Princess died in Baku, in Marie Mouquin's arms. Dick kissed her again before he left, and because she begged him to, and she smiled as she died with the memory of his kisses on her lips.
But for her Dick never would have entered Persia; never would have cast his strength of character and honesty into Persia's scale against Russia; and never would have won from the British Government the job of jobs, the independent, lone, extremely difficult command he holds and in which Jenison helps him.
Even now he would not hesitate to say that he would have preferred to end Colonel of his father's old regiment. But nevertheless, being Dick, he is not without gratitude that other men—such as Jenison—might call quixotic and absurd.
On one day each year he has determined to wear mourning for the Princess Olga Karageorgovich; and to say a word against her in his presence at any time would be to learn what a gentleman dare say and do to prove he bears no resentment, even against such an enemy as she was.
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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