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Red Shadow

OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA

Jim Mackenzie came into the bare room with the office table set on one side of it to catch the dingy light of the winter afternoon. It was only two o'clock, but the sky was dark with snow clouds and the air tense with frost. The room was cold in spite of the stove in the corner, but the place from which Jim Mackenzie came had been colder. The icy chill of it was in his bones, and the horrible rank stench of it in his nostrils. This cold, bare office room felt warm as he came into it — warm, and full of clean air. His eyes went to the patch of leaden sky before he looked at the man behind the office table.

A yard inside the door he stood still, because the men on either side of him stood still. He wished that they would stand farther off, because the reek of the prison was upon them, as it was upon him. He wanted as much clean air as he could get. He had had ten days of the sort of prison which is reserved for political offenders in Russia, and now he supposed that he was to be shot. He stood still with his guards on either side of him and watched the man at the office table.

A small man, rather like an ant, with an ant's big head and an ant's restless activity. He had taken no notice of the opening door or of the prisoner's entrance. He wrote with feverish haste, snatching one paper after another from a pile on his left, scribbling some marginal note, and then thrusting the paper upon a growing pile to his right.

Jim was wondering why he had been brought here at all. It was ten days since he had been arrested, a week since he had been told that he was to be shot without the formality of a trial, a week since he had written to Laura. He wondered whether she would ever get the letter. He had been assured that it would reach her. If the assurance was worth anything, the letter might very well have reached her by now. His brows drew together in an involuntary frown of pain. His heart said "Laura"; and all at once it was as if she was there in the cold, bare room, bringing with her all those things from which a Bolshevist bullet would presently divorce him.

A man's senses are sharp on the edge of death. To Jim Mackenzie, Laura Cameron was for that instant exquisitely and unforgettably present. There was a sweetness, and a something that was like the bloom on light. There was the way she smiled, and the turn of her head. She did not smile like any other woman that he had ever known. Her eyes smiled first; you could watch a kind of dancing joy come up in them like light coming up through dark water. And then her lips quivering, and the smile come and gone before you could catch your breath. He caught it now. The sense of her presence was strong. It pierced him with an agony beyond anything he had known. To die with Laura waiting for him, with their wedding set for a bare week ahead! To leave her comfortless! He had a strange irrational feeling that it would not be so bad if he could be there to comfort her. He rocked for a moment on the verge of the impossible _____

The little man at the table thrust a paper violently upon the right-hand pile, and said without looking up,

"Come nearer — I can't speak to you over there."

Jim advanced. The guards advanced. They stood still again, all three of them, about a yard from the table.

The little man looked up, pen in hand. His eyes, behind powerful lenses, were small, intent, and highly intelligent. The tip of his nose moved, sniffed.

"Those prisons are insanitary," he said in an irritable voice.

"Undoubtedly," said Jim Mackenzie.

The eyes focused on him. At a sign the guards fell back towards the door.

"You are James Mackenzie?"

"I am."

"You are a Russian subject."

"Certainly not."

The little man plucked a paper from an open file, slammed it down on the desk in front of him, stabbed at it with a quivering finger, and repeated,

"You are a Russian subject!"

"I am a British subject," said Jim Mackenzie.

Both men spoke Russian. Both men spoke it as men speak their own language.

The little man banged a fist on the paper before him.

"You were born in Russia — your father was born in Russia — your grandfather and your father were married in Russia. You are a Russian subject!"

"I haven't got a drop of Russian blood in my veins!" said Jim Mackenzie. He stood up straight and stuck his chin in the air.

It was a blunt chin. All his features were blunt and rather heavily moulded. He had fair hair that curled thickly, and a short fair stubble of eyelash and eyebrow. His strong neck rose from powerful shoulders. He had not been able to shave or wash since his arrest.

You cannot turn a Scot into a Russian by arranging for him to be born in Russia. Jim Mackenzie was at this moment full of the Scot's arrogant contempt for lesser nations. Inwardly he said, "And be damned to you!" — and for twopence he would have said it aloud. There was a bullet waiting for him anyhow. He smiled rather grimly, then shut his lips and let his eyes speak for him.

The little man made a marginal note.

"You are a Russian subject. You have been engaged in counter-revolutionary activities."

"I have not!"

The little man made another marginal note.

"You have been engaged in counter-revolutionary activities. The sentence is death. You were informed of this a week ago."

The room was as cold as a tomb. The patch of sky was leaden dark. The little man leaned sideways and touched a switch; a bright unsparing light stripped the room to its bare, ugly bones. Jim Mackenzie faced it impassively. The eyes behind the strong lenses watched him.

"The sentence is death," the little man repeated. "In certain circumstances it is possible that the sentence might be commuted." He paused, and then darted a sharp question. "You do not say anything?"

Jim Mackenzie stood like a rock. The sudden assault of hope tried his defences high, but he stood. He thrust the thought of Laura down, down, into those depths which were secret even to himself. He faced the white light and the keen intelligent eyes and smiled.

"Is there anything to say?"

The telephone bell rang sharply. The little man picked up the receiver. There was a buzzing and a thrumming from the instrument.

The little man said, "Yes;" and after a while, just before he hung up the receiver, he nodded and said in an emphatic manner, "Immediately — I understand." Then he pushed away the instrument and once more fixed his eyes on Jim Mackenzie.

"This morning you saw Mr Trevor?"

"Yes."

"He made a report on you," said the little man.

"Did he?"

He had been surprised that they had allowed him to see Trevor. The interview had not lasted more than two minutes. He had been unable to conceive its purpose, but Trevor had promised to write to Laura — to give messages —

The thought broke off as a jerked thread breaks. The little man was speaking.

"The special circumstances have arisen. You are free to go."

The blood rushed to Jim Mackenzie's head. He could feel it pounding against his ears. He said in a hard voice which he himself could scarcely hear,

"What do you mean?"

"Your sentence is commuted — on conditions. You are free."

There was some snag then. The pounding lessened. He said,

"What conditions?"

"You are to leave Russia."

A gale of inward laughter shook his self-control. It wavered. What would happen if he burst out laughing in the Insect's bespectacled face?

"That is one condition." The little man was speaking. "You are to leave Russia. And the second condition is this. You will go straight to Berlin, and from Berlin you will telephone to a lady who is anxious to have news of you."

Jim Mackenzie's self-control gave way. He said, "What?" in a voice that caused the guards to make a tentative step forward.

The little man waved them back impatiently.

"You will telephone to Miss Laura Cameron," he said.

Laura Cameron stood looking at herself in the slender mirror which had belonged to her great-grandmother, another Laura Cameron. It hung between two tall and slender poles. The poles were gracefully fluted, and their feet were shod with old dim brass. The mirror was of an oblong shape with brass corners and a very narrow line of gilding between the glass and the mahogany frame. Laura had brought it out of her bedroom and set it at the far end of the sitting-room.

Very little light came through the sitting-room windows. A yellowish fog hung across them like a curtain. The houses opposite were blotted out. Laura had switched on both the lights, the one in the alabaster bowl, and the one in the reading-lamp with the orange shade. These two colours of light, warm white, and glowing, filled the mirror and shone on the image of Laura in her wedding dress. Behind her to the right and left, sometimes in the picture, and sometimes merely in the room, were the figures of Amelia Crofts in her black dress and white apron, and of Jenny Carruthers in her bridesmaid's frock, which had a tight green bodice and a very long and spreading green skirt. The green was shot with a silver thread which repeated the colour of Jenny's ash-blonde hair.

By every canon of the heart Laura Cameron was beautiful. The very air of beauty surrounded her, and under its influence classic standards were discarded. Her face was oval, the dark line of her eyebrows like slender wings, her nose of a charming irregularity, lips sensitive and deeply coloured parting over teeth that were very white and a little uneven. Her ears were beautifully shaped, and beautifully set on a gracefully carried head. Her eyes had dreams in them. Her skin was soft with a downy bloom and quick with colour. All this the world could see. The tender sweetness of Jim Mackenzie's Laura was for him alone.

Laura stood and looked into the mirror. She saw herself in the white cloud that was her veil. It hid her hair, and the line of her slender shoulders, and the young curve of her breast. It came down in a faint foam about her feet. She lifted it with both hands and looked over her shoulder to say to Jenny,

"It's too long — isn't it?"

The white, veiled Laura in the mirror moved too. The veil floated out, the long straight dress shimmered through it — a silver dress like a silver sheath. Jenny stepped out of the picture with a whisk of her apple-green skirt.

"Much too long — bulgy!"

Amelia Crofts sniffed. She had a thin pale nose, and could convey practically any shade of meaning in a sniff. She considered that Miss Laura looked a perfect h'angel, and that bulgy wasn't no sort of word for a young lady to use. Her sniff made both of these things perfectly clear.

"I should have a good foot off it," said Jenny. She tilted her head. "Or two — or three. It makes you look exactly like a parcel done up in white tissue-paper."

Laura laughed — softly, because her wedding dress made her feel as if she was in church. She held the veil out like wings and turned to the mirror. There was something unfamiliar about the Laura who looked back at her. It was the veil of course; it hid her hair and made her look like a nun. She pushed it back a little and released a soft dark curl on either side.

"Is that better, Jenny?"

Jenny looked over her shoulder and nodded in the glass.

Amelia said, "Oh, miss, that's lovely!" and Laura turned to smile at her.

She saw herself as she turned, the smile in her dark eyes — eyes neither grey nor brown, no-coloured eyes full of a soft darkness — her bloom heightened, the carnation springing to her cheeks. And as she turned, the bell of the flat rang with a hard buzzing sound.

Amelia sniffed — a sniff of pure aggravation. This was perhaps the most enchanted moment of a rather drab life, and it was just bound to be broken into by that there dratted bell, as if there wasn't twenty-three other hours in the day for them to come a-banging and a-ringing — the dratted nuisances. Her pale nose twitched angrily as she went out of the room, shutting the door sharply behind her.

Jenny stood on tiptoe listening.

"It's a man."

Laura's colour sprang up.

"It can't be Jim! To-morrow's the very earliest, and I haven't heard _____"

"Of course it's not Jim. He wouldn't stop at the door." She pounced on Laura and pulled her towards the bedroom. "And I don't care who it is, they're not going to see either of us. Quick — she's letting him in! I'll murder Amelia for this!" She whisked Laura and Laura's train into the bedroom and banged the door. "Tell Amelia I'll come back and murder her in the middle of the night — slowly — something lingering, with boiling oil in it!"

"Tell her yourself!" said Laura, laughing.

And then the door opened and Amelia came in with a card in her hand.

"He says he must see you, miss."

"But, Milly — I can't!"

Laura took the card, frowning a very little. She read: "Mr Basil Stevens"; and, pencilled above the name, the words: "Very urgent business."

"But I hardly know him," she said.

Jenny was half out of her bridesmaid's dress. She wriggled free and threw it over the end of the bed.

"Who is it?" she asked.

"Basil Stevens. I've met him — I don't really know him. I can't imagine why he wants to see me."

Jenny slipped into a dark blue day-frock and crammed on a hat.

"Send him away if you don't want to see him. Golly! It's late! I'm meeting Kathie for a matinée, and she'll be wild. Where's my coat, Amelia? It's a perfectly foul afternoon! I'll leave the dress here. So long, Ducky! Snub Basil if he gets fresh!"

"I didn't know you knew him."

"I don't," said Jenny at the door. "Au revoir!"

Laura smiled vaguely at the closing door.

"I must change if I've got to see him," she said; and then, "What is it, Milly?"

Amelia's hands were shaking; she held her apron, but they shook. Her nose twitched, and her long upper lip.

"Oh, Miss Laura!"

"Milly — what is it?"

Amelia put up a trembling hand and touched her smooth grey hair.

"I don't rightly know — it come into the flat with him."

A cold air blew upon Laura.

"What, Milly?"

"Trouble," said Amelia Crofts. She blinked with reddened eyelids.

Laura stood still for a moment. It was a moment in which she forgot everything except that word trouble. Trouble meant bad news, and bad news meant Jim. She forgot all about being in her wedding dress. When the moment passed, she opened the door and went into the sitting-room with Basil Stevens's card in her hand and an icy fear at her heart. She lifted her train, closed the door again mechanically, and then stood still.

Basil Stevens came to meet her.

"How do you do, Miss Cameron? I must apologize _____"

Laura interrupted, first with a movement of the hand, and then with a quick,

"What is it?"

He had left his hat and stick in the hall. He stood before her bare-headed — a good looking man of five or six-and-thirty with widely set eyes of a bright hazel colour, brown hair, and a face that narrowed from the rather high cheek-bones to a pointed chin. He held his tall figure a little bent forward as if he were ready to bow over the hand which Laura had not extended.

She kept her eyes on his face and repeated on a hurrying breath,

"What is it, Mr Stevens?"

Perhaps he had not expected this ready alarm. Perhaps the wedding dress and veil, which she had forgotten, were not without their effect upon him. He was, for the moment, silent; and in that moment Laura came nearer and laid a hand upon his arm.

"Mr Stevens — is it anything about Jim?"

Basil Stevens recovered himself. He said,

"I think we had better sit down."

Laura took the chair which he offered her. She was glad of it, because, when he did not answer her question, she had felt the floor move under her feet. She sank down into the chair and said piteously,

"Is it Jim? Won't you tell me? I'd rather — know —" And there she stopped, because some bottomless pit seemed to open as she said the words, and out of it there came up the shadows of the things that she might have to know — Jim ill — Jim dying — Jim dead.....

Basil Stevens saw the last of her colour drain away. She had been pale and startled when she came into the room, but now even her lips were white. He had no wish to have her fainting on his hands. He said sharply,

"Mackenzie's alive and well."

The change came so quickly to her face that it astounded him. Colour and life rushed back to it. She closed her eyes for a moment, and then looked at him with a kind of gentle reproach.

"You frightened me dreadfully."

"I'm sorry — I had no wish to frighten you. May I ask when you last heard from Mackenzie?"

"I haven't had a letter since Saturday."

"And this is Wednesday."

Laura smiled a little tremulously. Relief had deadened her perceptions.

"Yes — but he may be home to-morrow. I don't think he will, but it's just possible, and he said I could count on Friday."

"I'm afraid you mustn't count on anything."

Laura's head lifted. She could be angry now. How really impertinent of him to be talking like this!

"Will you tell me what you mean, Mr Stevens?"

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Excerpted from Red Shadow by Patricia Wentworth. Copyright © 1932 Patricia Wentworth. Excerpted by permission of OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA.
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