X — “Where the Railway Ends”
Simon felt his knees grow weak beneath him — he was almost overcome with nausea; he was not frightened for himself, only appalled at this sudden slaying of a fellow human without warning. “It’s — it’s awful,” he stammered.
“There, there, my son,” said De Richleau, soothingly. “Do not waste your great heart on this scum. Praise be to God, I have killed many such. You would not pity him if you had seen, as I have, all that his kind accomplished in 1919 and 1920. I fought with Denikin’s White Army, and we saw sights that froze one’s heart. Little children burned to death — men with their eyes gouged out — women of our own blood, who had been kept in brothels, filthy with disease — a thousand horrors committed at the instigation of your friend Leshkin and his kind. It is a nightmare that I would forget. Come now, help me to hide the body of this dog.”
Simon put down the suitcases and drew a breath. He was a natural philosopher, and once recovered from the shock, accepted the awful thing as part and parcel of this astounding adventure into which he had been drawn.
The door of the shed was fastened only by a piece of rope, and they found it to be filled with old farm implements.
Quickly, and as noiselessly as possible, they moved a stack of bent and broken shovels — carried in the body of the wall-eyed man, and piled the shovels over him until he was completely hidden; they secured the door more firmly, and, having obliterated the blood marks in the snow, hurried through the maze of wood stacks towards another group of sheds, the roofs of which were rapidly becoming plainer in the growing light.
The goods-yard seemed deserted, and they were fortunate in finding an empty shed. Once inside it De Richleau flung his suitcase on the ground, and, kneeling down, commenced to unpack. Simon followed his example. In a few minutes they had stuffed the rucksacks with the supplies of food and their most necessary belongings. Next they defaced the labels on their bags and stowed them in an opening between two sheds, heaping stones and rubble on top to hide them from view.
Wherever they moved they left large footprints in the snow, and Simon, greatly perturbed, pointed out there tracks to the Duke, but De Richleau did not seem unduly worried.
“Look at the snow,” he waved his hand about him. “They will be covered in an hour.” And, with the coming of day, the snow had begun to fall again, softly, silently, in great, white, drifting petals that settled as they fell, increasing the heavy band of white on every roof and ledge.
“Well, I never thought I should be glad to see snow,” said Simon, with his little nervous laugh. “What do we do now?”