Knight Without Armour

The night had a brilliant moon, and the hills, seen through the windows of the train, upreared like heaving seas of silver. There was no light in the compartment save that of a candle-stump fixed in the neck of a bottle. The heavy bearded faces of the guards shone fiercely in the flickering light. They were Ukrainians and sometimes exchanged a few husky words in their local dialect. A.J. had a slight understanding of this, but the men talked so quietly that he could not catch more than a few words here and there.

Suddenly the train came to a jangling standstill, and after some delay a train official walked along the track with the information that a bridge had been blown up just ahead and that all passengers must walk on several miles to the next station, where another train would be waiting. A.J., his prisoner, and the two guards, climbed down to the track, which ran in a wide curve through densely wooded country. One of the guards declared that he knew the spot quite well, and that there was an easy short-cut to the station across country. A.J. doubtfully agreed and they set off along a wide pathway that met the railway at a tangent. They all walked in silence for a few minutes, with the voices of the other passengers still within hearing; but soon they were amongst tall pine- trees, and A.J. imagined, though he could not be certain, that the path was veering too far to the north. He said to the guards: “Are you quite sure that this is the way?”—and one of them answered: “Oh yes—you can hear the engine-whistle in the distance.” A.J. listened and could certainly hear it, but it sounded very remote.

They all walked on a little further, with the two guards chattering softly together in Ukrainian. A.J.’s acute sense of direction again warned him, and a somewhat similar feeling of apprehension must have seized on his prisoner, for she said “Don’t you think we should have done better to keep to the railway line?”

At last even the guards seemed to be undecided; they had been walking a little ahead and now stopped and began arguing together in excited undertones.

“Don’t you think it would have been better?” she repeated.

“Possibly,” he answered, in a whisper. “It was certainly foolish to let them lead us into this forest.”

“You think they have lost the way?”

“Maybe—or maybe not.”

“Ah,” she answered. “So you too are wondering?”

“Wondering what?”

“What they are chatting about so quietly.”

He said quickly: “I have a revolver. I am keeping a look- out.”

He was, in fact, beginning not to like the appearance of things at all. Had the two guards led them deliberately astray, and if so, with what intention? In the train he had heard them chattering together, but they could hardly have been plotting this particular piece of strategy since the blown-up railway bridge could not have been foreseen. Perhaps, however, the idea had come to one of them as a quick impromptu, a variant upon some less immediate scheme that they had had in mind.

One of the guards approached him with a measured deliberation which, in the moonlight, seemed peculiarly sinister. “If you will both wait here with me,” he began, “my friend says he will find out where we are and will come back to tell us.”

At first it seemed an innocent and reasonable suggestion, involving the somewhat lessened danger of being left alone with one possible enemy instead of two. But then A.J. recollected an ancient ruse that bandits sometimes played on their victims in Siberian forests; they said they were going away, but they did not really do so; they crept back and sprang on their enemies from behind. “No,” he answered, with sudden decision. “It doesn’t matter—we’ll go back to where we began and then walk along the track. I think I can remember the way.”

He began to walk in the reverse direction with the woman at his side and the two guards following him at a little distance. They seemed rather disconcerted by his decision, and continued to exchange remarks in whispers.

After a few moments A.J. said quietly to his companion: “I want you to be on your guard. I don’t trust those fellows.”

“Neither do I. What do you think their game is?”

“Robbery. Perhaps murder. This going back to the railway has upset their plans—I can gather that from the way they’re talking.”

“What can we do?”

“Nothing—except keep our heads. Have you good nerve?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“Then take this revolver and use it if necessary, but not otherwise.” He handed it to her quickly as they passed into the shadow of dark trees.

For the next few moments there came no sound except the crunch of four pairs of footsteps over the fir-cones. Neither A.J. nor the woman spoke, and the two guards also had ceased their whispered conversation.