XIII
So Bunny saw the Russian picture. His beloved was the beautiful bride of a grand duke; the gestures, the kisses, the raptures of love, which had been rehearsed upon himself, were now lavished upon a magnificent, sharp-whiskered personage in a military uniform with many stars and orders. This personage was haughty but high-minded, and his grand duchess was the soul of charity; and oh, such lovely gentle peasants as she had to exercise her charity upon! How sweetly they curtsied, how charmingly they danced, and gathered to cheer and throw flowers after the grand ducal carriage! It was a beautiful, almost idyllic world—one was tempted really to doubt whether any world so perfect ever had existed on earth.
There was only one thing wrong with it, and that was a secret band of villains with twisted, degenerate faces, some of them with wild hair and big spectacles, others with ferocious black whiskers and knives in their boots. They met to concoct anarchist manifestoes, intended to seduce the sweet innocent peasants; and to make dynamite bombs to blow up noble-minded grand dukes. They drank in booze-dens, and grabbed women by the arms and man-handled them, right out before one another. There was no wickedness these creatures did not do, and their leader, with the face of a rat and the arms of a gorilla, made evident to the dullest mind why the picture was called “The Devil’s Deputy.”
Then came the young secret service man, clean-cut, smooth-shaven, quick on the trigger. His job was to get messages from the American embassy to the American fleet, and later on to save the treasure of the embassy from the Bolsheviks. For of course you know what happened in Russia—how this band of villains with twisted faces rose up and overthrew the government, and killed the haughty but just grand duke with cruel tortures. It was, of course, the grand duchess that the Devil’s Deputy especially wanted; and first he chased her about the castle, and battered in the doors, and the young secret service hero dashed with her from room to room. Blood ran down his face from a bullet wound, but he carried her out of a window of the castle, and away they flew on horseback, over hills and dales covered with the familiar Russian eucalyptus trees.
And then presently they were trapped in St. Petersburg, and the Devil’s Deputy laid his foul hands on Vee, and tore her lingerie to shreds, as the billboards had promised you he would. But here came the hero with his automatic, and he held the mob at bay, while Vee behind her back made signals to a friend of the hero who was preparing one of the villains’ own bombs to throw at them—could you imagine more poetic justice than that? Vee and her savior fled, this time in a motor-car, over roads of the well-known Russian concrete, through the well-known mountains of the suburbs of St. Petersburg, and came to the River Neva, with its eucalyptus groves concealing a speed-boat. There was another mad chase, which ended in the capture of the agonized pair, and more tearing of Vee’s lingerie by the Devil’s Deputy.
But—don’t be worried—at the most critical instant came the American Navy, that whole glorious flotilla which we kept in the River Neva during the war. Old Glory floated in the breeze, and the band played “The Stars and Stripes Forever,” and the million dollar audience burst into enraptured cheering. A launch from a battleship came dashing up, the Devil’s Deputy leaped into the water with one of his own bombs in his mouth, and Viola Tracy and the secret service man stood clasped in an attitude which was familiar to Bunny, and hardly less so to the million dollar audience.
All the time this story was unfolding, Bunny was privileged to sit and hold the heroine’s hand. Once she leaned to him and whispered, “Is it so very bad?” His answer was, “It is up to standard. It will sell.” It was the formula she had used with Annabelle Ames; and Bunny felt a tight pressure of his hand. It was clever of him, as well as kind!