As Verbitzsky approached the south end of the yard, which is excavated deeply and walled in from the surrounding streets, he turned, to my amazement, away from the line that led into the suburbs, and ran along four tracks that led under a street bridge.
This bridge was fully thirty feet overhead, and flanked by wings of masonry. The four tracks led into a small yard, almost surrounded by high stone warehouses; a yard devoted solely to turn-tables for locomotives. There was no exit from it except under the bridge that we passed beneath.
"Good!" we heard Nolenki cry, fifty yards behind. "We have them now in a trap!"
At that, Verbitzsky, still in the moonlight, slackened speed, half-turned as if in hesitation, then ran on more slowly, with zigzag steps, as if desperately looking for a way out. But he said to me in a low, panting voice:—
"We shall escape. Do exactly as I do."
When the police were not fifty feet behind us, Verbitzsky jumped down about seven feet into a wide pit. I jumped to his side. We were now standing in the walled-in excavation for a new locomotive turn-table. This pit was still free from its machinery and platform.
"We are done now!" I said, staring around as Verbitzsky stopped in the middle of the circular pit, which was some forty feet wide.
Just as the police came crowding to the edge, Verbitzsky fell on his knees as if in surrender. In their eagerness to lay first hands, on him, all the police jumped down except the chief, Dmitry Nolenki. Some fell. As those who kept their feet rushed toward us, Verbitzsky sprang up and ran to the opposite wall, with me at his heels.
Three seconds later the foremost police were within fifteen feet of us. Then Verbitzsky raised his terrible bombs.