I thanked her and asked where I was, and learned that this was a convent and that I was still in the city of Ekaterinburg.
The water had moistened my mouth and lips; now I could speak, but weakness lay also in my voice, which emerged as the barest of whispers. 'How did I get here?'
'Your friend brought you. Monsieur Bronard. Oh, so long ago, m'sieu!' She had slipped into French; like so many educated Russians in those days, she must have preferred that language to her own.
'So long ago?' I asked. 'When does that mean?'
'Almost one month,' she said, smiling. 'For almost one whole month you have had us all worried and praying for you.'
A month!'What is the date?'
'The fourth of June.'
Yet I had returned to the city on May 10th! 'How can it be - what has happened?'
She gave me a smile of great gentleness. 'Pneumonia: first one lung, then the other. Two bouts of severe illness, m'sieu, two long fevers, two crises. Twice you were all but dead. Now you need food, strength.'
The shock was clearing my head now. My mind was no longer content to drift and was instead engaged in speculation as to what might have happened.
'Tell me, mousie ur,who holds the city?'
'The Bolsheviks,' she said with tight lips. It was apparent she had little time for them.
'The Whites have not -?'
'They advance,' she answered. 'So it is said. But not yet to Ekaterinburg.'
'And the Tsar? Is he -?'
She shushed me then. 'Too much talk, m'sieu. You must rest.'
'Tell me.'
'We must not speak of such things,' she said.
'Is he alive?'
She nodded and moved away, murmuring, 'Sleep now, m'sieu.' And I heard the door latch. My mind would have had me out of bed at once, but my mind was not in control. A few minutes'
wakefulness and a sip of water had given me no vitality and indeed I felt, if anything, still weaker. Willy-nilly, sleep took me and when I woke again it was to a shadowed room lit by candles, to the sight of the good sister - and to the smell of food ! It was a broth of meat and she placed a stool beside my bed and fed it to me, spoonful by spoonful, as though I were a baby. There was barley in it, I remember, and onion, and in all my life I remember no food so entirely delicious. And more, for as I ate it was possible to feel something positive in my body, an awakening of strength, a movement in the blood. When it was done the nun smiled again and said, 'Soon now you will be strong,' and departed. Bronard came an hour later, and now I was slipping into sleep, but he would have none of it and pinched my cheek until my eyes opened. Even so, I begged him to leave me, but it could only have been weakness that spoke, for in fact I was desperate for news.
He whispered, 'Don't you want to know?'
'Yes, yes.'
'They're here. The whole family.'
'Where?'
"The Ipatiev House. Still under guard. The others were brought from Tobolsk - the boy and the three Grand Duchesses. Now they're all together.'
'But alive?'
'So far,' he said. 'Some of their entourage have been returned to Tobolsk.'
I felt a great sense of relief: the family was together and unharmed. An entire month gone and they remained safe. 'What other news?' I asked.
'One of the servants has been shot,' Bronard said harshly 'The paper - what of that?' But my strength was ebbing.
'I can hardly hear you,' he said irritably. 'Paper,' I muttered.
'No,' he said impatiently. 'I haven't got it! But we must find a way - understand!'
CHAPTER NINE
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The Boy on the Talking Motor-Cycle
It was not Sir Horace Malory's habit to attend the quarterly dinners of the organization known as UKUS, a society whose members, as the name indicated, came equally from United Kingdom and United States business and banking houses in the City of London. The society's twin purposes were to ease the flow of business between the two nations, and to enable Americans resident in Britain to become acquainted in congenial surroundings with one another and with well-disposed Brits. By tradition the evenings were boozy: bread rolls were thrown about, speakers hissed, practical jokes played, wagers won and lost.
Malory felt he was a little old for that kind of thing, but he went, for Pilgrim's sake. The man might enjoy it ...
He didn't though; nor did Malory. A florid actuary sitting across from them at the long table began the trouble.
'Saw you at the Turner auction the other night,' he said jovially to Malory. 'Any idea who bought it?'
'No,' said Malory shortly.
'Lot of cash for a yard of canvas and a smear or two of paint, wouldn't you say?' the actuary went on cheerfully. 'People really do toss their money around. Don't believe in it myself.'
'Nor I.' Malory, disliking this talk, wished the man would shut up. He put on his bumbling-old-duffer manner, 'Lot of damned nonsense. That's what I say. Waste of good money! I say, I was hearing about the Chancellor -'
'Funny,' said the actuary with determination. 'I did hear Hillyard, Cleef were the buyers.'
'Got more damned sense,' Malory bumbled. 'Hillyard, Cleef! Dear, oh dear. Hear that, Pilgrim?'
Pilgrim laughed harshly. 'Where'd that pile of horseshit come from?'
'And,' added the actuary cheerfully, raising his voice a little and looking around for additional attention,
'that wasn't all I heard!'
'If the rest is as puerile as that, I should concentrate on the soup,' Malory said. He sipped his own. It was scalding hot.
But the thing was started now. 'The way I heard the story,' said the actuary happily, 'it started very close to the dealer who did the bidding. He said the buyer had to remain anonymous, but it was an Anglo-American banking house -'
'Stuff and nonsense!' said Malory.
'-with a guilty conscience.' The circle of laughter round the actuary widened. The doddering-old-buffer-manner slid away from Malory's shoulders like a snake's sloughed skin. He could sense now what was coming. He reached across the table, placed his forefinger beneath the rim of the actuary's soup plate, and tipped it into the actuary's lap. As he said later to an astonished Pilgrim, 'Really it was the only gratifying moment in the whole evening. Nice to see the fella hopping about clutching his trousers, what? You do know what he was going to say, don't you?'
'No.'
Malory gave him a warning glance. 'I'm not going to let the words even pass my lips, my dear chap. Let things like that get out and they take wing.'
They were taking wing even as he spoke. The actuary had a smallish but painful scald in a thoroughly inconvenient place and he was not the kind of man to allow Malory's grey hairs to offer protection against retribution.
From his bathroom, where he sat with a bag of ice in one hand and a telephone in the other, he set about discovering the name of the current Art Critic of The Times. This established, he managed finally to reach the man and pass on what he described as 'a rumour, but from well-informed circles'. The man from The Times said he was most interested, and certainly he sounded it.
'The City Editor of The Times would be grateful for a word with you,' Pilgrim's secretary said brightly, early the following morning.
Pilgrim picked up the telephone. 'What can I do for you, George?'
It turned out not to be George, the City Editor, whom he knew, but one Valentine, the mumble-mumble, whom he didn't.
'Just one question, Mr Pilgrim, really.'
'Go ahead.'
'Is it true you bought the Turner to present it to the nation?'