Page:Edgar Wallace--The book of all-power.djvu/200

 "Wait," said the voice.

The man passed them. They heard him him a handle.

"Straight ahead you will find the door."

They obeyed, and their conductor struck a match and lit an oil lamp. They were in the long room—they guessed that by the glow of the closed stove they had seen as they entered.

The windows were heavily shuttered and curtained, and even the door was hidden under a thick portière. The man who had brought them in was middle-aged and poorly dressed, but then this was a time when everybody in Russia was poorly dressed, and his shabbiness did not preclude the possibility of his being the proprietor of the house, as indeed he was.

He was eyeing them with suspicion, not wholly unjustified, for the patent respectability of Cherry's Derby hat was no compensation for the armoury belted about his rotund middle.

But when the man's eyes fell upon Malinkoff, his whole demeanour changed, and he advanced with outstretched hand.

"General Malinkoff," he said, "you remember me; I entertained you at"

"At Kieff! Of course!" smiled Malinkoff. "I did not know the Ivan Petroff of Moscow was the Ivan of the Ukraine."