The Golden Sabre

The sergeant peered and leered at her, split between appreciating this rich plum of a girl and wondering what she was doing here. A Turkic-speaking gentleman, he also only vaguely understood what she had said to him in Russian. He straightened up and nodded to one of his younger soldiers.

‘Question her.’

The young soldier pressed his horse forward, likewise leered down at Eden. She felt she was being visually molested as the horsemen crowded round her; Nikolai had warned her what might happen if these Tartars took it into their heads to come out from Verkburg and pillage the estate. Now here they were and if they found the man they were looking for, God help him. And, what was worse, God help her and the children.

‘I am in charge here—’ said Frederick.

Eden hit him with her handbag and the soldiers laughed and cheered. Frederick drew himself up and almost got another whack with the handbag. ‘Shut up, Freddie. What can we do for you, corporal?’

‘We are looking for an American in a motor car—’

‘That must have been he who passed us and covered us in dust,’ said Olga.

‘Children should be seen and not heard,’ said Eden, trembling inside, seeing two of the soldiers now leering at Olga. ‘Of course it was he, who else could it have been?’ She looked up at the young corporal. ‘He was travelling north at a great speed, out there on the Ekaterinburg road. He went by us in a cloud of dust and disappeared up the road.’

The corporal conveyed this information to the sergeant, who peered and leered again at Eden. She and the children were still tightly encircled by the horsemen. She felt more threatened now than ever before in her life; somehow she felt more endangered now than in the Revolution riots two years ago in St Petersburg; even the flight from that city had not had any close moments of danger. These Tartars, savages on horseback, could do what they wanted with her and the children and there would be no one to stop them. The estate workers were too far away, the house servants were probably already cowering in the cellars; Nikolai, she knew, was a reliable coward and the American, who had brought these men here, was an unknown quantity. She felt suddenly overcome by fear and the heat and was ready to collapse. She would be unconscious when she was raped for the first time, which was probably the best way to be.

The sergeant straightened up, snapped something to his men in his own tongue and all six of them suddenly whirled their horses about and went galloping off down the avenue, disappearing like evaporating ghosts into the shadows of the poplars. Eden, halfway to fainting, came back to full consciousness.

‘Just as well they decided to go,’ said Frederick. ‘I’d have shot them with Father’s gun.’

‘Just what we need,’ Eden said to Olga. ‘A stupid twelve-year-old hero. We’d have all been dead before you could have loaded the gun.’

‘It’s already loaded,’ said Frederick. ‘I’ve had it loaded for weeks, just in case.’

‘I had mine ready, also just in case.’ Cabell came out of the barn carrying a Winchester rifle. ‘Those bastards looked—’

‘Mr Cabell, could you please moderate your language?’

Cabell took off his hat and inclined his head. ‘Sorry. I’ve been talking to myself for so long, I keep forgetting … Thanks, Miss Eden. You could have given me up to those guys, you know. I wouldn’t have blamed you.’

‘Never!’ Frederick was a one-boy defender against the invaders. ‘Those men are barbarians!’

‘Do be quiet, Freddie,’ said Eden. ‘Mr Cabell, where were you intending to go?’

‘I was heading for Ekaterinburg. But I’m not going to make it now – when I blew my tyres I bugg – messed up the wheels. I’ll have to go on foot, unless I can buy a horse from you.’

‘We shall sell you a horse,’ said Frederick. ‘We have dozens – Ouch!’

Eden hit him with her handbag, but did not give him a glance.

‘Mr Cabell, if you go by horse you will have to travel at night. They will be watching for you all the way to Ekaterinburg. As soon as those men get back to Verkburg they will send a message through on the telegraph to all the villages and towns between here and Ekaterinburg. These White armies do fight amongst themselves, but they also co-operate with each other sometimes. We’ll give you a horse and you can leave after dark.’

‘Miss Eden, you are a peach. And very resourceful, if I may say so.’

Eden blushed under the compliment and Olga said, ‘I love to hear a man compliment a woman. It is the way things should be.’

Cabell raised an eyebrow, then bowed. ‘At your service, Miss—’

‘Princess,’ said Olga. ‘Princess Olga Natasha Aglaida Gorshkov.’

‘I am Prince Frederick Mikhail Alexander Gorshkov,’ said Frederick, not to be out-ranked.

‘And I am plain Miss Eden Penfold.’

‘Not plain,’ said Cabell, smiling. ‘And I’m delighted to meet a fellow proletarian. As for you two aristocrats, buzz off while I talk to Miss Penfold.’

‘We stay,’ said the two aristocrats. ‘This is our house—’

Eden raised her handbag again, but Frederick and Olga moved back out of range. Cabell looked at the two children, then shrugged. ‘Okay. Are there any servants here besides that guy Nikolai?’

‘There are four in the house, but they can be trusted,’ said Eden. ‘It is the workers out in the fields I’m not sure about.’

‘One of them is a Bolshevik,’ said Frederick. ‘That fellow Vlasov. He spits in the dust every time I pass him.’

‘So should I if I were not a lady. That doesn’t make me a Bolshevik. But Freddie is right – there are some out there who are not to be trusted. Nikolai has told me of some of the talk that has been going on lately.’

Nikolai had come across from the stables and stood just behind the two children. He did not understand the conversation in English, but he looked as worried as the others. He kept glancing down the avenue, waiting for the Tartars to come thundering back and kill them all.

‘The car under that cover in the barn,’ said Cabell. ‘Does it go?’

‘It hasn’t been driven since Prince Gorshkov went off to the war last December,’ said Eden.

‘What sort is it?’

‘A Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost,’ said Frederick. ‘There are only nine Rolls-Royces in the whole of Russia and the Tsar had two of those. But Father’s is the fastest of them all.’

‘A Rolls-Royce, eh? Then that means I couldn’t borrow it or buy it?’

‘Exactly,’ said Eden firmly. ‘You will take the horse and leave tonight.’

Cabell smiled. He was not much taller than Eden, just medium height, and though he had wide shoulders there was not much beef on him. Had the managers been able to sweet-talk him back in the days of his youth he would now be a middleweight, maybe fighting the likes of Mike O’Dowd and Harry Greb; whomever he fought, the situation would be less dangerous than this. He had black hair and a black moustache and sun-darkened skin that accentuated the white exclamation of his smile. His movements were a physical illustration of his personality, quicksilver in a tube that occasionally spilled its cork. Eden liked what she saw.

‘I won’t embarrass or endanger you, Miss Penfold. I’ll be out of here tonight. In the meantime I better start covering up my truck some way, in case those soldiers come back.’

‘Afternoon tea will be at four. I’ll send one of the servants for you.’

Eden had recovered her poise. She was perhaps a little stiff and starched, but that, Cabell guessed, went with being a governess. Under her straw hat he could see blonde hair drawn back in a bun; the style was severe but it showed her long graceful neck. She had dark blue eyes with heavy lids that made it hard for her to turn a glance into a stern stare; she had a slightly indolent look about her that was deceiving, an odalisque who cracked a whip; had Croydon had harems she might never have left England. Her figure was the sort that promised much even under the high-necked shirt and long brown skirt she wore; it was an unspoken and, to her, unrealized invitation to carnal thoughts in men. Cabell, who could have carnal thoughts with the best of them, shrugged philosophically. This was no time for getting randy.

‘Come on, children, time for your music lesson.’

‘I think I shall stay with Mr Cabell,’ said Frederick; then backed off as Eden raised her handbag. ‘Don’t you dare do that again! When we have won the war I’ll see that you go to jail with all the other Bolsheviks—’

‘Inside!’ snapped Eden, and after a moment’s further rebellion Frederick followed his sister into the house. ‘Forgive him, Mr Cabell. He’s not really a bad child. He just thinks, with his father away, that he has to be master of the house.’

‘Where are their parents?’

‘Princess Gorshkov is down in Tiflis, in Georgia, and Prince Gorshkov is somewhere with General Denikin’s army. I have no idea when they will be back,’ she added worriedly. ‘Princess Gorshkov wants us to join them in Tiflis. But how does one get from here to there, a thousand miles away?’

‘A good question,’ said Cabell; but he had his own problems.

‘I’ll be ready for tea when you call me. And thanks again, Eden.’

No man had called her plain Eden since Lieutenant Dulenko had called her that and my darling five years ago; not even Prince Gorshkov departed from the formal Miss Eden when he addressed her. But Igor Dulenko was long since dead and the love she had felt for him had withered away. It was strange that a strange man, using her given name so casually, should have reminded her of Igor and what she had once felt for him. For a moment she felt unutterably sad and she turned away from Cabell and went into the house without a word.

Cabell looked after her curiously, then he went back to the barn with Nikolai and began to think of ways of hiding the Chevrolet.

[3]

Cabell had been in the barn half an hour, had, with the willing help of Nikolai, pushed the Chevrolet right to the back of the barn and hidden it from casual sight behind stacked bales of hay. He had taken off his shirt from under his overalls and his skin, covered in dust, was streaked with a dark wash of sweat. He leaned against the shrouded Rolls-Royce and took the pannikin of water Nikolai brought him.

‘How is the war going, Nikolai? Are the Whites or the Reds winning?’

‘I don’t know, sir. We hear nothing down here. We have enough to worry about with that General Bronevich and his savages. As soon as the weather gets cooler they’ll start riding out this far and then we’ll—’ He did not finish the sentence, but shuddered.

‘Have you worked for the Gorshkovs a long time?’

‘Only three years. I am a Cossack from a little village on the Don.’

‘Then you’d be a good man to defend Miss Penfold and the kids.’

‘I doubt it, sir. My father used to say a fart would knock me down. He was a very vulgar man, vulgar and violent. He had seven sons, I was the youngest, and he said his spunk had run out by the time he got to me. When he was drunk he used to wail that he was the only Cossack along the whole Don River who had a fairy at the bottom of his garden. That was where he used to make me sleep, in the woodshed.’

‘Well—’ said Cabell; but was left with nothing else to say.

‘Well—’

Then they heard the sound of a car coming up the avenue. Nikolai raced to the doorway. ‘It’s General Bronevich and his soldiers!’

Cabell grabbed his shirt, hat and rifle and scrambled up the ladder to the loft of the barn. He heard the car grind to a halt, its engine whistling for a moment, then wheezing into silence; then he heard the jingling of stirrups and the murmurs of men as they steadied their horses. He crept across the loft and peered out through a crack in the timber walls.

The car’s driver had jumped down and opened the door. General Bronevich got out, followed by Pemenov. The sergeant and the horsemen who had been here earlier had returned, but they had not dismounted and remained in the background as the General went up the steps of the house and banged loudly on the front door.

Inside the house the servants, ears alert as yet-undiscovered radar, had once again fled to the cellars. Eden waved the children back up the stairs in the main hall and went fearfully to the front door and opened it. General Bronevich almost fell back down the steps in surprise.

He had been expecting some servant, as dumpy as himself, to open the door. Instead here was this pretty girl with hair the colour of Siberian buckwheat honey, a bosom that reminded him of the lower foothills of the Yablonois, and a body perfume composed of rosewater, starch and fear. He turned to Pemenov on the steps below him and said, ‘Come back for me in an hour. I shall interrogate this girl myself.’

‘Will it be safe, General?’

‘For me or for her?’ Bronevich’s smile was as obscene as an open fly, except that it was golden.

‘Yes, General. What about the men?’

‘Tell them to wait down by the front gates. I do not wish to be disturbed in my interrogation. You may take the motor car. Go for a drive and run over some peasants.’ He laughed loudly this time; he was suddenly in both high good humour and high tumescence. The afternoon was going to be better than he had expected, he had already forgotten why he had come here. ‘Get lost, as they say back in Skovodorino.’

Pemenov smiled, saluted, went down the steps, gave an order to the horsemen, climbed into the car and was driven off, followed by the six mounted soldiers. Eden watched all this, puzzled and still fearful, holding on to the front door for support while her legs seemed to get thinner and more brittle, so that she felt if she moved they would snap like dry twigs beneath her. She swallowed, trying to moisten her dry throat, while the palms of her hands felt as if they were holding a pint of water each.

General Bronevich gave her his bullion smile: gold gleamed in his mouth like a newly-opened reef. ‘I am General Bronevich,’ he said in Russian. ‘I am here to service you.’

Oh my God, Eden thought, does he really mean what he’s just said? She swallowed again, forced some words out of her arid throat: ‘What can I do for you, General? Your men have already been here—’

‘I am coming in,’ said the General and pushed past her and kicked the door shut behind him. He looked up and saw Frederick and Olga leaning over the balustrade at the top of the stairs. He hated kids, especially the kids of these nambypamby Russian aristocrats. He bellowed ‘Back to your room! I don’t want to see you again! Go!’

At the top of the stairs Frederick drew himself up; but Eden got in first: ‘Freddie, Olga – do as the General tells you! Go on, go back to your rooms – at once!’ Then she added, her voice thinning with the fear that was taking her over completely: ‘Please.’

Frederick hesitated, then abruptly he grabbed his sister and the two of them disappeared from the top of the stairs. General Bronevich winked approvingly. ‘You know how to handle children – good, good. Sometimes I think they should all be strangled at birth. But then we shouldn’t be here enjoying each other, eh?’ The gold came out again, carats of good humour. ‘Well, let’s see where we’ll have our little interrogation. Are there any bedrooms downstairs?’

‘No, General.’Should I scream for help? ‘Let us go into the drawing-room.’

The General, disappointed that he might have to take second best in the way of a comfortable rape, followed Eden into the drawing-room and shut the double-doors behind him.

It was a long, high-ceilinged room with a parquet floor on which rugs were scattered. A big blue-patterned ceramic stove stood in one corner; there was also a marble-surrounded fireplace in which logs were already stacked as if winter might strike at any moment. The furniture, painted white with gold trim, was solid rather than elegant; but the white grand piano in one corner stood on graceful carved legs and apologized for the heaviness of some of the other furniture. When the Gorshkovs had fled St Petersburg they had brought no furniture, but they had come heavily laden with ornaments. The rugs on the floor were Bokhara’s best, brought from the house in St Petersburg; a Corot and a Watteau, bought by Princess Gorshkov on one of her visits to Paris, hung on the walls; several minor pieces by Fabergé decorated the mantelpiece. But Bronevich, a man with a crude eye, saw none of these better adornments.

He walked to the piano, opened up the keyboard lid and struck the keys with hammer fingers. He nodded admiringly at the discord he had created, then looked around him. He saw the long couch facing the open french windows and the view of the wheatfields beyond. It was not as good as a bed, but it would do. He put his belt and holstered pistol on a side table and took off his jacket.

Eden, not quite believing this was happening, said, ‘General, what are you going to do?’

‘You,’ said the General and exposed his member, which, slant-eyed and bald-headed, looked as Mongolian as the rest of him.

Out in the barn Cabell, having seen Pemenov in the car and the six soldiers on their horses go off down the avenue, was wondering what was happening in the house. Down below him Nikolai had come back into the barn and was wandering up and down in a frenzy of fear and worry.

Cabell called down to him. ‘Go across and see what’s happening.’

Nikolai’s upturned face showed eyes as white as a terrified horse’s. ‘He will kill me—’

Then there was a scream from the house. Cabell, clutching his rifle, tumbled down the ladder, went racing out of the barn and across towards the open french windows. He leapt up the steps and plunged into the drawing-room as General Bronevich tried to plunge into the wildly evasive Eden.

Cabell shouted and the General, letting go his trousers, spun round and grabbed for his pistol on the table beside the couch. His trousers fell down round his ankles, he stumbled and fell forward on his knees and Cabell hit him hard behind the ear with the stock of the rifle. The General gave a grunt and went down on his face, twitched and lay still. Cabell kicked him over on his back, saw the General’s erection and modestly kicked him over on his face again.

Eden sat up on the couch, gasping for breath as she pulled her skirt down over her exposed legs. Her hair had tumbled down from its pins and hung wildly about the torn shoulders of her shirt; she looked nothing like the starched governess Cabell had talked to out in the barn. She glanced down at General Bronevich and saw the huge lump behind his ear from which blood was welling in a dark bubble.

‘Oh my God! Is he–?’

For the first time Cabell realized what he might have done. He dropped down on one knee and felt the General’s pulse. Then he rolled the Tartar over on his back, grabbed a rug and threw it over the now limp weapon that had threatened Eden, and bent his ear to the General’s broad fat chest. Then he straightened up, wondering if today wasn’t someone else’s nightmare that he had wandered into.

‘He’s dead!’

Then the door burst open and Frederick, a double-barrelled shotgun held at the ready, stood there with a wide-eyed, terribly frightened Olga at his shoulder. The two children looked down at the dead General, then Olga pushed past her brother and ran into Eden’s arms. Eden tried to comfort her while trying to pull herself together. Too much had happened in the last five minutes, she had been raped emotionally if not physically.

Cabell crossed to Frederick and took the gun from him. The boy stared at him, but there was no dispute. He would have fired the gun if there had been need for it; he was prepared to kill but he was not prepared for death. He had seen dead men before, the bodies of soldiers glimpsed lying beside the railway tracks as they had fled from St Petersburg, but he had never seen death up close. It was even more horrifying to have it here in the house with them.

‘We’ve got to get away,’ said Cabell. ‘When will that dwarf in the car be back? Eden, I’m talking to you!’

Eden’s senses, which seemed to have left her, started to work again. ‘The dwarf? Oh – he told him to come back in an hour. But—’

‘No buts. We’re getting out of here. You, me and the kids.’

Frederick drew a deep breath, took his eyes off the corpse on the floor and tried again to be the man he thought he was. ‘How? You said your motor car won’t work—’

‘We could go on horseback,’ said Eden. ‘But not to Ekaterinburg—’

‘There’s a British consul there – you’d be okay—’

‘But not the children—’ Her mind was in gear again. ‘The local commander in Ekaterinburg would not let the children go—’

‘Then we better head somewhere else. Does that Rolls-Royce work?’

‘Of course,’ said Frederick. ‘Every week I run the engine – Father asked me to do that. But we’d have to put the wheels on. Father took them off and put them in one of the big wine vats with french chalk on them, to stop the tyres from perishing,’ he said.

‘Okay, you come with me. Eden, you and Olga pack a bag. You better tell the servants to get the hell out of here – they don’t want to be in the house when the dwarf and those soldiers come back and find him.’ He nodded down at the dead General, just a mound beneath the Bokhara rug. ‘Can you see the road from upstairs?’

‘Yes, from the main bedroom.’

‘Olga, you stay at the window and keep an eye on the road. Let me know in a hurry if those soldiers start coming up from the gates. Eden, when you’ve packed your bag, get some food and water together. But first, get rid of those servants. Come on, Freddie.’

Cabell had no idea where he would head once (if) he got the Rolls-Royce started. But going on foot or on horseback would be futile; it would be like galloping off on a treadmill that would gradually grind to a halt beneath them. General Bronevich had probably been on the telegraph line to Ekaterinburg before he had left Verkburg; patrols would be on the alert all the way up the main road. To head west would mean going up into the Urals, into mountains that would offer no refuge; to go east would take them into the semi-desert steppes where they might run into another Tarter ataman’s army. The only imperative need was to get away from here and trust to luck, that some road would open up to safety.

As he crossed the yard towards the barn the full impact of what he had just done hit him. He pulled up sharply, as if it were a physical blow; then he hurried on, trying to shut his mind against the killing of Bronevich. He had injured men in fights, been injured himself; he was no stranger to violence in the often violent world in which he worked. But he had never killed a man before. What worried him was that as he had swung the rifle butt at the Tartar he had meant to kill him, though he hadn’t expected it would happen. He had never even thought of killing any of the men he had fought; but those fights had been over private, personal differences, some trivial. He had never fought over a woman. But it struck him now that he had meant to kill Bronevich because of what the General had been trying to do to Eden. He went into the barn cursing his chivalry.

When he threw back the cover from the Rolls-Royce he was amazed at the condition of the car. Its royal blue paintwork and huge copper-domed headlamps gleamed; its leather upholstery was uncracked. It looked ready to be driven off at once, except that it had no wheels and was mounted on wooden horses.

‘Nikolai washes and polishes it every week,’ said Frederick. ‘It was Father’s pride and joy and he told Nikolai he expected it to be as good as new when he came home from the war.’

In the next half-hour Cabell came to admire and bless the absent Prince Gorshkov, who had such blind faith in the future that he wanted to ride into it in the same style as he had ridden out of the past. He had left instructions that would have done credit to Henry Royce himself; nothing had been overlooked. The tyres, kept in french chalk, were in perfect condition. There were five of them with inner tubes, plus four others stuffed with sponge rubber balls. There were six four-gallon cans of petrol, a two-gallon can of Castrol oil and a box of spare parts. And there was a small single-shaft, two-wheeled wagon that could be attached to the back of the car.

When the car was ready to go, Cabell stood back. ‘Your father had some purpose for all this – he didn’t get all this ready for nothing. Did he ever tell you what he had in mind?’

Frederick shook his head; but Nikolai answered, ‘His Highness told me, sir. He said if ever the war was lost he was coming dack here and was going to drive the family to Vladivostok.’

‘Father would never have said such a thing,’ said Frederick. ‘He wouldn’t think that we could lose the war.’

Poor kid, Cabell thought. His Old Man protected him too well. The Russia of Rolls-Royces, even just nine of them, was gone forever. But Prince Gorshkov, wittingly or not, hadn’t bothered to tell his children. ‘We’re not going to try for Vladivostok,’ he said.

‘Where are we going then?’ said Frederick.

‘Christ knows. I’ll drive the goddam thing around in a circle and we’ll see what direction it comes out.’

Then Olga appeared at the doorway. ‘One of the soldiers is coming up the avenue!’

‘Where’s Miss Penfold?’

‘Here.’ Eden, dressed like Olga in a travelling suit, came into the barn carrying two large suitcases.

‘Where are the servants?’

‘They’ve all gone out to the fields. Quick – we must hurry!’

‘Is there any back road out of here?’

‘Yes – it goes down through the fields and out through the estate village.’

‘Goddam!’ Cabell went to the door, looked slantwise down through the poplars; the soldier, horse at a slow trot, was no more than a couple of hundred yards from the house. ‘If he sees us drive out of here he could cut across the fields and head us off. Nick!’

Nikolai was slow to respond; he was thick with fear. ‘Sir?’

‘Go out, see what he wants. Try and get him to come into the barn. Offer him a drink of vodka, wine, anything. But get him in here! Eden, get yourself and the kids out of sight. Come on, for crissakes move!’

Eden pushed the two children ahead of her towards the rear of the barn. Nikolai turned to follow them, but Cabell grabbed him and spun him round.

‘I told you – get out there and bring that soldier in here!’

‘I can’t, sir – I’m just jelly—’

‘You’ll be pulp if you don’t do what I tell you!’

‘You don’t have to do it, Nikolai,’ said Frederick gently. ‘I’ll go.’

He spun away from Eden and before she or Cabell could stop him he had run through the doorway and out into the yard. Cabell called to him in a low voice, but Frederick took no notice. Tears sprang into Nikolai’s eyes, ashamed that a boy had gone out to do what he had been afraid to; yet he still couldn’t move, stood there and wanted to die. Out in the yard Frederick stood with his back to the barn as the horseman came slowly out of the shadow-latticed avenue into the bright white dust of the yard.

‘Good afternoon.’ Frederick’s voice broke, ending on a high note; he cleared his throat and tried again. ‘Good afternoon, soldier. The General does not wish to be disturbed.’

The horseman was Pemenov. Thirsty, tired of driving around in the bone-shaking car, he had come back to the gates down on the road, where the six horsemen sprawled in the shade of the poplars. He had not wanted to drive up to the house in the car for fear its noise might disturb the General before the latter was finished whatever or whomever he was doing. He knew from experience how the General hated to be distracted while raping; it was one of his few sensibilities. The walk up the long avenue was too far for Pemenov’s short legs, especially on a day like this; so he had borrowed one of the horses. He had shortened the stirrup leathers and one of the soldiers had lifted him into the saddle; he knew that they laughed at him behind his back, but they would never laugh at him to his face while he was the General’s favourite. Now he sat above this arrogant aristocrat boy, his short legs sticking out on either side of the saddle, knowing he looked ridiculous and daring the boy to laugh. He would kill him if he did.

‘I want water,’ he said. ‘A drink.’

‘Water?’ Frederick was still having trouble with his voice. Cabell, listening to him, thought, The kid’s scared stiff. He looked angrily at Nikolai, but the anger died at once. Nikolai was still crying and behind the tears there was a look on his face that puzzled Cabell.

But Frederick was still managing to fool Pemenov: ‘Get down, soldier—’

‘Don’t keep calling me soldier. I am a major, Major Pemenov.’

This funny little man a major? But Frederick couldn’t laugh. ‘Major … Get down and come into the barn. There’s water there. And some of my father’s vodka, too.’

Pemenov nodded agreeably. ‘Vodka? That would be better.’ He smiled and Frederick gave a tentative smile in reply: they were like two children getting to know each other. ‘But with water, too.’

He slipped down from the saddle, landing with unexpected grace on his tiny feet. Leading the horse, he followed Frederick towards the open door of the barn. Frederick, for his part, suddenly realized he had no idea what Mr Cabell had in mind.

He faltered, stumbled, and the dwarf, still smiling innocently, as if eager to be a friend, reached forward and steadied him. Then they passed from the bright sunlight into the dimness of the barn.

Pemenov blinked, caught a glimpse of the gleaming big motor car, one he had never seen before, standing in the middle of the barn floor. He said, ‘It’s dark and cool in here.’

Then he saw the American coming at him. Cabell hit him with the starting handle of the Rolls-Royce and he went down into an even darker and cooler state. He dragged the horse’s head down with him as he fell face forward; it stumbled but kept its feet and finished up astride him, its hooves pawing nervously on either side of him. Cabell wrenched the reins free of the dwarf’s hand and threw them at Nikolai.