“No!” she cried, her eyes lit with a fierce enthusiasm. “For the greedy and selfish we ’ave no place, but we give life and ’appiness to all the thousands that toil in the factory and the mine. We free the women from the children that they should not be forced to bear, we save them from the drudgery of the ’ome. In a hundred years we will ’ave destroyed for ever that any ’uman being should suffer from ’unger and disease. Christ ’imself taught the brother’ood of all men, and that will He realize here, in Russia, two thousand years after ’e is dead.”
It was the supreme declaration of the Bolshevist ideal, and Simon was almost stunned by her outburst. Long afterwards he wondered how she reconciled her theories with the fact that she lived in the same state of luxury as the daughter of a capitalist multi-millionaire, but at that moment De Richleau seized him from behind and flung him bodily on to the fuselage of the ’plane.
“Hang on to the back of the seat, and lie flat, with your feet to the tail,” he cried.
With one pull of his strong arms Rex had hoisted the Duke up beside him. “All set,” he shouted. “Let her go.”
They ran forward slowly, bumping on the uneven ground. The ’plane lifted slightly, then bumped again, then rose once more, but only a few feet from the earth. Richard was nervous now that he would not be able to clear the bars at the end of the field. He was frightened, too, that with the extra weight on the tail they might stall at any moment. Quite suddenly the ’plane rose sharply — they were over the barns, sailing freely — rising every moment higher in the air.
Rex looked round to see if the enemy was following; he caught his breath — Simon was no longer there! He hit Richard on the back. “Simon,” he bawled. “We’ve dropped him.”
Richard banked steeply; they peered anxiously downwards, fearing to see a little crumpled heap in one of the fields below. The Soviet ’plane was circling slowly over the farmstead, apparently uncertain whether to land or give chase.
Leshkin scowled from his seat beside the pilot. In his anxiety that Richard should not see him before landing, he had misjudged the time it would take him to descend. His pilot obstinately refused to be hurried; the Kommissar cursed furiously as he saw Richard take off and glide, hesitatingly, towards the barn. Then he saw Simon fall.
“Descend!” he cried. “Make your landing at once.” But the pilot had already begun to follow the other ’plane, now he banked steeply away from the field.
“Descend!” yelled Leshkin again, his small eyes black with anger.