Knight Without Armour

A.J., mingling during the day with the crowds in the town and sleeping at nights on the bare boards of an inn-floor, could sense the keying of the atmosphere to higher and more dangerous levels. He did not feel any particular apprehension, still less any indignation; he had seen too many horrors for either. Every barbarism perpetrated by the Reds could be balanced by some other perpetrated by the Whites; the scales of bloodshed and cruelty balanced with almost exquisite exactness. There was also a point of experience beyond which even the imagination had no power to terrify, and A.J. had reached such a point. What he felt was rather, in its way, a sort of selfishness; out of all the chaos and wretchedness that surrounded him he felt inclined to seize hold of anything that mattered to him locally and personally in any way. And so little, when he came to think of it, did matter to him. Up to now he had been a blind automaton, letting Fate push him whither it chose and calmly accepting any task that was nearest. He had not cared; at Khalinsk he had been kind and wise and hard-working, but he had not cared. Yet now, for the first time, he felt a curious uprise of personality, a sort of you-be-damnedness entering his soul as he paced the streets and observed, still quite coldly, the wreckage of a world that cared as little for him as he for it.

Only very gradually did he perceive that he wanted the woman to escape. To any normally-minded person it would have seemed an absurd enough want, for the prison was strongly and carefully guarded. But A.J., just then, was not normally-minded. The more he tried to reconcile himself to the fact that his former prisoner would eventually he shot, like hundreds of other pleasant and possibly innocent persons, the more he felt committed to some kind of personal and intrepid intervention. But how, and when? He guessed that the revolutionary ardour of the soldiers would soon boil over and lead to the overthrow of Polahkin and the massacre of the White prisoners; he had seen that sort of thing happen too often not to recognise the familiar preliminary portents. Whatever was to be done must be done quickly—yet what could be done? He did not know in which part of the prison she was kept, nor even whether she were alone or with others. No doubt, wherever she was, she was being well guarded as one of the star-turns of some future entertainment.

At the prison entrance there was always a Red soldier on guard, and it was through these men alone that A.J. fancied he could accomplish anything. He silent many an hour furtively watching them and speculating which of them might be most likely to be useful for his purpose. At last he singled out a rough, fierce-looking fellow whom, about midnight, when the street was fairly quiet, he saw accept a small package from a passing stranger and transfer it guiltily to his own pocket. A.J. took the chance that thus offered itself.

“Good-evening, comrade,” he began, walking up to the man a moment later and looking him sternly between the eyes. “Do you usually do that sort of thing?”

It was a blind shot, but a lucky one. The guard, for all his fierce appearance, was a coward as soon as he thought himself discovered. He obviously took A.J. for an official spy who had been set deliberately to watch him, and A.J. did not disabuse him of the notion. He soon drove the fellow to an abject confession that he had been systematically smuggling tobacco into the prison for the benefit of the White officers. “Only tobacco, your honour,” he insisted, and produced from his pocket the little packet he had just received. “You know, your honour, how hard it is for a poor soldier to make a living in these days, and the White officers who are going to be shot very soon, promised me twenty roubles for this little packet. After all, your honour, I don’t have the chances that some of our men get—I had to be here on duty all that night when they were looting the shops.”

“That was unfortunate,” said A.J. dryly. “All the same, you must be aware of the penalties for smuggling things into the prison?”

“Yes, your honour, but surely you wouldn’t wish to get a poor man into serious trouble—”