“To pay the isvostchik—meaning the cabby. Hear him howl when I give it him.”
Christy was right. The man wailed and whined, raised his hands to heaven, called upon the moon as witness, flung his fur cap on the ground, spat on the mass of paper which Christy had given him.
“Skolka?” said Christy.
The man renewed his loud plaint, until one of the Red soldiers struck him on the chest with the butt-end of his rifle.
“I paid him forty thousand roubles too much,” said Christy. “He wanted fifty thousand more. Such is the greed and dishonesty of man!”
“What’s this house?” asked Bertram, staring up at a great mansion with a classical façade. “It looks like a palace.”
“That’s exactly what it is,” said Christy. “This is where I live. Nothing less than a palace for dear old Christy! An English aristocrat must have his four-poster bed and Louis Quinze suite.”
He went up a flight of steps and pulled a chain. There was the loud jangling of a bell, and presently a great rattling of bolts.
“They keep us under lock and key, so that we don’t escape without paying our bill,” said Christy. “You’ll find these Bolsheviks bleed the Western capitalist.”
The door was opened by a pretty, sleepy girl, with a shawl round her head. She greeted Christy with a smile, a yawn, and a German “Güten Abend.”