They had stepped out of the hotel into a pulseless street where mists from the Danube hung like cobwebs. Hindwood could not rid himself of the suspicion that they were followed. He glanced back repeatedly, drawing Santa sharply into doorways in attempt after attempt to trap the tracker. If a tracker there was, he never revealed himself. At last Hindwood realized that precautions were profitless. The cessation of their own footsteps gave ample warning. A pursuer had only to halt when they halted, to escape detection behind the fog.
They scarcely dared talk, and then only in brief whispers. It puzzled him how she could keep her direction. It was like tunneling a passage through chalk, which crumbled, yielded, and caved in as one went forward. The whole world dripped sullenly—unseen gutters, unseen trees, treacherous pavements. And there was always the drifting whiteness, pricking one's eyes as with little darts.
She had gone too far and turned back, feeling her way along the wall. Before a large double-door she paused and knocked. She rapped three times peculiarly before a grill was slipped back and a question asked. The answer which she gave appeared to be the countersign. A smaller door in the doubledoor was opened and they entered.
The person who had admitted them was a new type to Hindwood: flat featured, fair-headed, blue-eyed, clad in a loose khaki shirt, which bulged like a blouse, and in a pair of baggy breeches which were tucked into high-boots, roomy as pouches. But it was the expression of the man that was most impressive—his brooding appearance of enormous patience. Santa spoke rapidly in a language which was neither German nor French. The man nodded and led the way across a gloomy courtyard, up stairs rotten with decay, into a stone corridor lined with stout forbidding doors.
“Is it a prison?” Hindwood whispered.
“Little better. It's a barracks inhabited by the brains of outcast Russia—students, for the most part, male and female, who have escaped from the Red Terror. Russia has no use for brains at present. Brains are too dangerous. Wherever the Bolshevist finds them, he blows them out. Many of these exiles are survivors of Denikin's and Kolchak's armies. Having tried to save their country with rifles, they're now preparing themselves to rescue her with knowledge. They're learning to be doctors, engineers and lawyers, so that they may become the soul of the Russia of the future. Meanwhile they live anyhow, sleep anywhere and starve abominably. They're not wanted in Hungary or in any European country. They're suspected and hounded. The only reason they've been allotted this mildewed dwelling is in order that they may be watched.”
The guide had thrown open a door and stood signing to them, trying to catch their attention.
It was a grim sight that met their eyes, similar to the one they had left behind at the hotel only a thousand times more sordid. The windows were locked and heavily barred. The air was poisonous. The room was stripped of furnishings. On bare boards innumerable human beings, without a shred of bedding, sprawled, drugged with sleep, herded together in indecent proximity. There was scarcely space to walk between them. They were of both sexes. Here and there a child lay folded in a parent's arms. The men were of all ages, but for the most part young and still in the tattered uniforms of their defeated armies. The women were scarcely distinguishable from the men. Their heads were cropped. They wore odd garments of mixed masculine and feminine attire, such as could be purchased for next to nothing at any rag-shop. Some retained the soldier-garb of the Battalions of Death. As Hindwood gazed across the pool of mud-colored faces, “Heaven help us, if this is the soul of the future Russia!” he thought.
Suddenly his interest shifted. In the corner remotest from the door, his eye had caught the shining of golden tresses. Their owner's face was turned away from him; they seemed to weigh her down and were piled beneath her head in a cushion. On her left lay an aged peasant woman; on her right a man with a death-white face and a head that was peaked like a dunce's cap. The guide was already stooping over the man, touching him with a strange reverence. The man sat up. His green eyes opened. Hindwood experienced the same sensation of discomfort he had felt, when he had first seen them peering at him above the edge of the cliff at Seafold.
Varensky had risen. With his peculiarly catlike motion, he was picking a path towards them. He held out his hand.