There were a dozen men in the room in stained military overcoats and red armlets. One, evidently an officer, who carried a black portfolio under his arm, was leaning against the panelled wall, smoking and snapping his fingers to a dingy white terrier that leapt to his repeated invitations.

At the table, covered with documents, were two people, the man and the woman.

She, sprawling indolently forward, her head upon her arm, her strong brown face turned to the man, was obviously a Jewess. The papers were streaked and greasy where her thick black ringlets had rested, and the ashes of her cigarette lay in little untidy heaps on the table.

The man was burly, with a great breadth of shoulder and big rough hands. But it was his face which arrested the feet of Malcolm and brought him to a sudden halt the moment he came near enough to see and recognize the Commissary.

It was not by his bushy red beard nor the stiff, upstanding hair, but by the crooked nose, that he recognized Boolba, sometime serving-man to the Grand Duke Yaroslav. Malcolm, looking at the sightless eyes, felt his spine go creepy.

Boolba lifted his head sharply at the sound of an unfamiliar footfall.

"Who is this?" he asked. "Sophia Kensky, you who are my eyes, tell me who is this?"

"Oh, a boorjoo," said the woman lazily.

"A foreigner too--who are you, boorjoo?"

"A Britisher," said Malcolm.

Boolba lifted his chin and turned his face at the voice.

"A Britisher," he repeated slowly. "The man on the oil-fields. Tell me your name."

"Hay--Malcolm Hay," said Malcolm, and Boolba nodded.

His face was like a mask and he expressed no emotion.

"And the other?"

"Malinkoff!" snapped the voice at Malcolm's side, and Boolba nodded.

"Commanding an army--I remember. You drive a cab, comrade. Are there any complaints against this man?"

He turned his face to Sophia Kensky, and she shook her head.

"Are there any complaints against this man, Sophia?" he repeated.

"None that I know. He is an aristocrat and a friend of the Romanoffs."

"Huh!" The grunt sounded like a note of disappointment. "What do you want?"

"The stranger wishes permission to remain in Moscow until he can find a train to the north," said Malinkoff.

Boolba made no reply. He sat there, his elbows on the table, his fingers twining and untwining the thick red hair of his beard.

"Where does he sleep to-night?" he asked after awhile.

"He sleeps in my stable, near the Vassalli Prospekt," said Malinkoff.

Boolba turned to the woman, who was lighting a new cigarette from the end of the old one, and said something in a low, growling tone.

"Do as you wish, my little pigeon," she said audibly.

Again his hand went to his beard and his big mouth opened in meditation. Then he said curtly:

"Sit down."

There was no place to sit, and the two men fell back amongst the soldiers.

Again the two at the table consulted, and then Sophia Kensky called a name. The man in a faded officer's uniform came forward, his big black portfolio in his hand, and this he laid on the table, opening the flap and taking out a sheaf of papers.

"Read them to me, Sophia," said Boolba. "Read their names."

He groped about on the table and found first a rubber stamp and then a small, flat ink-pad. Sophia lifted the first of the papers and spelt out the names.

"Mishka Sasanoff," she said, and the man growled.

"An upstart woman and very ugly," he said. "I remember her. She used to whip her servants. Tell me, Sophia, my life, what has she done now?"

"Plotted to destroy the Revolution," said the woman.

"Huh!" grunted the man, as he brought his rubber stamp to the paper, passing it across to the waiting officer, who replaced it in his portfolio. "And the next?"

"Paul Geslkin," she said and passed the document to him. "Plotting to overthrow the Revolution."

"A boorjoo, a tricky young man, in league with the priests," he said, and again his stamp came down upon the paper, and again the paper went across the table into the portfolio of the officer.

The soldiers about Malcolm and his friend had edged away, and they were alone.

"What are these?" whispered Malcolm.

"Death warrants," replied Malinkoff laconically, and for the second time a cold chill ran down Malcolm's spine.

Name after name were read out, and the little rubber stamp, which carried death to one and sorrow to so many, thudded down upon the paper. Malcolm felt physically ill. The room was close and reeked of vile tobacco fumes. There was no ventilation, and the oil lamps made the apartment insufferably hot. An hour, two hours passed, and no further notice was paid to the two men.

"I can't understand it quite," said Malinkoff in a low voice. "Ordinarily this would mean serious trouble, but if the Commissary had any suspicion of you or me, we should have been in prison an hour ago."

Then suddenly Boolba rose.

"What is the hour?" he said.

A dozen voices replied.

"Half-past ten? It is time that the sweeper was here."

He threw back his head and laughed, and the men joined in the laughter. With a great yellow handkerchief, which reminded Malcolm of something particularly unpleasant, Boolba wiped the streams from his sightless eyes and bent down to the woman at his side, and Malcolm heard him say: "What is his name--he told me," and then he stood up.

"Hay," he said, "you are a boorjoo. You have ordered many men to sweep your room. Is it not good that a house should be clean, eh?"

"Very good, Boolba," said Malcolm quietly.

"Boolba he calls me. He remembers well. That is good! I stood behind him, comrades, giving wine and c............