Knight Without Armour

A.J. was unwilling to betray himself by any too intelligent answer, so he merely half-nodded and let the other continue talking, which he was more than willing to do. He had been a professor of moral philosophy, he confided, and was now penniless and starving. Probably also (though he did not say so) he was a little mad. He expounded to A.J. a copious theory of the decadence of Western civilisation and the possible foundation of a new and cruder era based on elementals such as hunger, thirst, cruelty, and physical uncleanliness. “No man,” he said oracularly, “has really eaten until he has starved, or been clean until he has felt the lice nibbling at him, or has lived until he has faced death.” He also praised civil war as against war between nations, because it was necessarily smaller and more personal. “It is better, my friend,” he said, “that I should kill you for your wife, or for the contents of your pockets, than that we should stand in opposing trenches and kill each other anonymously because a few men in baroque armchairs a thousand miles away have ordered us to.”

Conversation was several times interrupted by gusts of machine-gunning; once a spray of bullets shattered the already broken windows and several refugees were cut by falling glass.

About two in the morning there was a sudden commotion in the building below, and a Red officer, armed with two revolvers, rushed into the room with the brusque order that all refugees were to form up in the square outside for inspection, since it was believed that many White guards and bourgeois sympathisers were hiding in disguise amongst them.

The whole company, numbering between five and six hundred, were marshalled in long lines facing the town-hall front, where other groups of refugees were already drawn up. The procedure had a certain ghastly simplicity. Red officers, carrying lanterns, peered into the faces of each person, searching for any evidences of refinement such as might cast suspicion on the genuineness of identity. Hands were also carefully inspected. When A.J. observed these details he felt apprehensive, not on his own account, but on Daly’s. The examining officers, shouting furiously to those who from weakness or panic could not stand upright, were certainly not in a mood to give the benefit of any doubts. Those whose faces were not seared deeply from winds and rains, or whose hands were not coarse and calloused, stood little chance of passing that ferocious scrutiny. Slowly the group of suspects increased; the ex- professor of philosophy was among the first to be sent to join it. The officer who was examining those near A.J. was a coolheaded, trim young fellow much less given to bullying his victims than the rest, but also, A.J. could judge, much less likely to be put off by a plausible tale. He did not linger more than a few seconds over A.J.—that grim, lined face and those hands hardened by Arctic winters were their own best argument. At Daly, however, he paused with rather keener interest. A.J. interposed with the story he had prepared for the occasion—that she was his daughter, a semi-invalid, and that he was taking her to some distant friends by whom she might be better looked after. The officer nodded but said: “Let her speak for herself.” Then he asked her for her name, age, and place of birth—all of which had been agreed upon between A.J. and herself for any such emergency. She answered in a quiet voice and did not seem particularly nervous. That clearly surprised the questioner, for he asked her next if she were not afraid. She answered: “No, but—as my father has just said—I am ill and would like to be allowed to finish my journey as soon as possible.”

While the youth was still questioning her, another officer approached of a very different type. He was a small, fat-faced, and rather elderly Jew, glittering with epaulettes and gold teeth and thick-lensed spectacles. One glance at the woman was apparently enough for him. “Don’t argue with her, Poushkoff,” he ordered sharply. “Put her with the suspects—I’ll deal with her myself in a few moments.”

Poushkoff saluted and then bowed slightly to Daly. “You will have to go over there for a further examination,” he said, and added, not unkindly, to A.J.—“Don’t be alarmed. You can go with her if you like.”

They walked across the square, and on the way A.J. whispered: “Don’t be alarmed, as he said. We’ve come through tighter corners than this one, I daresay.” She replied: “Yes, I know, and I’m not afraid.”