Lerkoff asked David to wait in another room while he saw Herr Cantberg professionally. There was an Ark with scrolls of the Law in the room, betiding a piety and a purse beyond the normal. Presently Lerkoff reappeared chuckling.

'He knows all about you, you infamous rascal,' he said.

'You have told him?'

'He told me; he always knows everything. You are a baptized police spy, posing as a P.P.S. I suppose he's heard of your visit to Herr Rubensky.'

'But I shall undeceive him!'

'Not if you want his money. Such a blow to his vanity would cost you dear. Go in; I did not tell him you were the young man he was telling me of. I must fly.' The P. Z shook David's hand. 'Don't forget he's the bourgeois type of Zionist; his object is not to create the future, but to resurrect the dead past.'

'And mine is to keep alive the living present. Won't you——?' But the doctor was gone.

The Mizrachi Z.Z. proved unexpectedly small in stature and owl-like in expression; but his 'Be seated, sir—be seated; what can I do for you?' had the grand manner. It evoked a resentful chord in David.

[396]'It is something I propose to do for you,' he said bluntly. 'Milovka is in danger.'

'It is, indeed,' said the M.Z.Z. 'When men like Dr. Lerkoff (in whose company I was sorry to see you) command a hearing, it is in deadly danger. An excellent physician, but you know the Talmudical saying: "Hell awaits even the best of physicians." And he calls himself a Zionist! Bah! he's more dangerous than that young renegade spy who dubs himself P.P.S.'

'But he seems very zealous for Zion,' said David uneasily.

Herr Cantberg shook his head dolefully. 'He'd introduce vaccination and serum-insertions instead of the grand old laws. As if any human arrangement could equal the wisdom of Sinai! And he actually scoffs at the Restoration of the Sacrifices!'

'But do you propose to restore them?' David was astonished.

The owl's eyes shone. 'What have we sacrificed ourselves for, all these centuries, if not for the Sacrifices? What has sanctified and illumined the long night of our Exile except a vision of the High Priest in his jewelled breastplate officiating again at the altar of our Holy Temple? Now at last the vision begins to take shape, the hope of Israel begins to shine again. Like a rosy cloud, like a crescent moon, like a star in the desert, like a lighthouse over lonely seas——'

The telephone impolitely interrupted him. His fine frenzy disregarded the ringing, but it jangled his metaphors. 'But, alas! our people do not see clearly!' he broke off. 'False prophets, colossally vain—may their names be blotted out!—confuse the foolish crowd. But the wheat is being sifted from the chaff, the fine [397]flour from the bran, the edible herbs from the evil weeds, and soon my people will see again that only I——'

The telephone insisted on a hearing. Having refused to buy furs at the price it demanded, he resumed: 'Territorialist traitors mislead the masses, but in so far as they may bring relief to our unhappy people, I wish them Godspeed.'

'But what relief can they bring?' put in David impatiently. 'Without Self-Defence——'

'Most true. They will but kill off a few hundred people with fever and famine on some savage shore. But let them; it will all be to the glory of Zionism——'

'How so?' David asked, amazed.

'It will show that the godless ideals of materialists can never be realized, that only in its old home can Israel again be a nation. Then will come the moment for Me to arise——'

'But the English came from Denmark. And they're nation enough!'

The owl blinked angrily. 'We are the Chosen People—no historic parallel applies to us. As the dove returned to the ark, as the swallow returns to the lands of the spring, as the tide returns to the sands, as the stars——'

'Yes, yes, I know,' said David; 'but where is there room in Palestine for the Russian Jews?'

'Where was there room in the Temple for the millions who came up at Passover?' retorted Herr Cantberg crushingly.

The telephone here interposed, offering the furs cheaper.

'A godless Bundist!' the owl explained between the deals.

[398]'A Bundist!' David pricked up his ears. From the bravest revolutionary party in Russia he could surely cull a recruit or two. 'Who is he?'

The owl tried to look noble, producing only a twinkle of cunning. 'Oh, I can't betray him; after all, he's a brother-in-Israel. Not that he behaves as such, opposing our candidate for the Duma! Three hundred and thirteen roubles,' he told the telephone sternly. 'Not a kopeck more. Eh? What? He's rung off, the blood-sucker!' He rang him up again. David made a note of the number.

'But what have you Zionists to do with the Parliament in Russia?' he inquired of the owl.

But the owl was haggling with the telephone. 'Three hundred and fifteen! What! Do you want to skin me, like your martins and sables?'

'You are busy,' interposed David, fretting at the waste of his day. 'I shall take the liberty of calling again.'

A telephone-book soon betrayed the Bundist's shop, and David hurried off to enlist him. The shopkeeper proved, however, so corpulent and bovine that David's heart sank. But he began bluntly: 'I know you're a Bundist.'

'A what?' said the fur-dealer.

David smiled. 'Oh, you needn't pretend with me; I'm a fighter myself.' He let a revolver peep out of his hip-pocket.

'Help! Gewalt!' cried the fur-dealer.

A beardless youth came running out of the back room. David laughed. 'Herr Cantberg told me that you were a Bundist,' he explained to the shopkeeper. 'And I came to meet a kindred spirit. But I was [399]warned Herr Cantberg is always wrong. Good-morning.'

'Stop!' cried the youth. 'Go in, Reb Yitzchok; let me deal with this fire-eater.' And as the corpulent man retired with an improbable alacrity, he continued gravely: 'This time Herr Cantberg was not more than a hundred versts from the truth.'

David smiled. 'You are the Bundist.'

'Hush! Here I am the son-in-law. I study Talmud and eat Kest (free food). What news from Warsaw?'

'I want both you and your father-in-law,' said David evasively—'his money and your muscles.'

'He gives no money to the Cause, save unwillingly what I squeeze out of Cantberg.' The youth permitted himself his first smile. 'When he deals with that bourgeois at the telephone, I always egg him on to stand out for more and more, and my profit is half the extra roubles we extort. But as for myself, my life, of course, is at the disposal of headquarters.'

David was moved by this refreshing simplicity. He felt a little embarrassment in explaining that headquarters to him meant Samooborona, not Bund. The youth's countenance changed completely.

'Defend the Jews!' he cried contemptuously. 'What have we to do with the Jewish bourgeoisie?'

'The Bund is exclusively Jewish, is it not?'

'Merely because we found the rest of the Revolutionary body too clumsy for words. It was always getting caught, its printing-presses exhumed, its leaders buried. So we split off, the better to help our fellow-working-men. But we are a Labour party, not a Jewish party. We have the whole Russian Revolution [400]on our shoulders; how can we throw away our lives for the capitalists of the Milovka Ghetto? Then there are the elections at hand—I have to work for the Left. Ah, here come some of our bourgeois; ask them, if you like. I will keep my father-in-law out of the shop.'

Two men in close confabulation strolled in, a third disconnected, but on their heels. With five Jews the concourse soon became a congress.

One of the couple turned out to be a Progressive Pole. He mistook David for a Zionist, and denounced him for a foreigner.

'We of the P.P.P.,' he said, 'will peacefully acquire equal rights with our fellow-Poles—nay, we shall be allowed to become Poles ourselves. But you Zionists are less citizens than strangers, and if you were logical, you would all——'

'Where's your own logic?' interrupted the disconnected man. 'Why don't you join the P.P.N. at once?'

The Progressive Pole frowned. 'The Nationalists! They are anti-Semites. I'd as soon join the League of True Russian Men.'

'And do you trust the P.P.P.?' his companion asked him. 'I tell you, Nathan, that only in the Progressive Democratic Party, with its belief in the equality of all nationalities——'

'If you want a Party free from anti-Semites,' David intervened desperately, 'you must join the Samoo——'

'I fear you will get no recruits here,' interrupted the Bundist, not unkindly. He added with a sneer: 'These gentlemen of the P.P.P. and the P.P.N. and the P.P.D. are all good Poles.'

'Good Poles!' echoed David no less bitterly. 'A............