Pierre! Don't let him escape." 

 The lackey moved cautiously forward, and then gave a sudden leap back as the boyish figure sprang to his feet, clasping a dark, oblong object in his arms. 

 "A bomb, a bomb! In the name of all the saints! If he should drop it they were doomed, they were dead men!" 

 The eyes of the lackey were bulging with terror and he stood riveted to the spot. In the meantime the young man had snatched out his watch and was holding it up into a patch of moonlight. 

 "Twenty past the hour!" he exclaimed, "and old Galitsin fuming, I'll be bound! I'll have to make a run for it. Hey, Bobo!" 

 As he spoke, an iron hand came down on his shoulder and he looked up amazed into a pair of eyes, small and black and crossed, flashing with fury. 

 "Drop it," hissed a voice, "and I'll throttle you as you stand! Traitor! Assassin! Your driver obeyed orders, did he? You knew? Vermin, you ran us down! How did you know? Who betrayed me?—Who?" 

 The youth stood motionless for a moment in astonishment. He was helpless as a girl in that vicious grasp that was bearing him under slowly, relentlessly.  "For the love of heaven," he cried, "Let go my arm, you brute, you'll sprain a muscle! Be careful!" 

 "Drop it, and I swear by all that is holy—" 

 "You old fool, you curmudgeon, you coward of an old blatherskite!" cried the boy, "I wouldn't drop it for all the world, not if you went on your bended knees. Bobo, yell for the police! Don't you touch my wrist! Look out now! Of all unpleasant things—! 

 "Bobo, come here. Never mind the horses. I tell you he is ruining my arm!—Hey!  Help! You're an anarchist yourself, you fool! Shout, Bobo, shout!" 

 In the struggle the two had passed from the shadow into the moonlight and they now confronted one another. The master of the black sleigh was still enveloped in his cloak, only the gleam of his eyes, small and black and crossed, was visible under the cap, his beaked nose and the upward twist of his grey mustache. 

 The youth stood erect and angry; his head was bare, thrown back as a young lion at bay, his dark hair falling like a mane, clustered in waves about his broad, overhanging brows; strange brows and strange eyes 

 Prev. P 4/163 next