CHAPTER X

THE EVIL ONE TAKES A HAND

Peter rushed to the door and stood, staring.

Balls of red fire were shooting out into the air from the opened casement of the room in the loft, flooding the place with light as they burst with terrific explosions. In the light Peter could see his men standing horror-struck, four below him at the bottom of the stairs, and four on guard at the door. Those who had been clinging to Stas on the landing had recoiled in fright before the fiery balls, and the half-wit had seized the opportunity to slink stealthily away through their legs, and make for the lower steps.

For a moment Peter stood motionless. In bodily things he was braver than the brave, but in the face of such magic as this he was a coward; yet though he trembled, he realized that he must play a man’s part if he wished to keep the leadership of his band, and accordingly, spurring himself up to a pitch of bravado, he rushed up the stairs from the second floor to the third and stood there just as another bomb soared out into the air.

“Come back! Come back!” they were shouting from below.

“Come up! Come up!” he commanded. “What are you frightened of?”

“It is the Evil One, himself!”

Peter shook his curved Cossack sword in the darkness. “Come up—come up, I tell you, you cowardly dogs—come up or I’ll separate your coward heads from your useless bodies. Come up, I say—come up!”

And so much was he feared that the three men on the second floor landing crossed themselves in the manner of the Greek Church and went creeping up after him.

“We have the treasure,” pleaded the nearest man in a trembling voice, “let us escape from here. This is nothing human. This is the work of the Evil One. Devils are abroad and a man is not sure of his soul.”

“Devils,” roared Peter, “bones and fiddlesticks! Come up here, you, and be men. This is no devil. This is some joker who values his head but lightly. If we do not silence him he will alarm the whole city before we get back to the gate.”

“Up that,” he commanded a second later, shoving the first man against the staircase to the loft. “Up that, and tell us what you see.”

The man mounted, trembling violently, for he was sure that the powers of darkness themselves were working against them.

“The door is open here,” he whispered, “and no lights within.” A man below him on the stairway passed the word along to Peter.

“Then up, every mother’s son of you,” ordered the leader. “There is a man there. Put a knife in his throat and descend quickly.”

The rest pulled themselves up and entered the loft. After a few minutes of impatient waiting Peter climbed the steps himself and pushed himself across the dark threshold.

“What have you found?” he demanded impatiently.

“Nothing,” the answer came faintly from one corner of the loft.

“If there is any one here let him speak now,” Peter bellowed. His voice drowned the quiet opening of the door of a closet in the back of the room. “If we find any one it will go hard——”

Like a bolt of lightning out of a clear sky the loft was suddenly illuminated with a glow of red fire as there leapt into existence out of the blackness of the night the very incarnation of the Evil One in his worst mood. Clad in fiery garments which smelled of fire and brimstone and which seemed to blaze and burn and give off a greenish smoke and flame, he moved slowly forward, waving in his right hand a scepter of flaming red which was crackling with heat as a green bough crackles when it burns, while from its end little balls of fire were dripping.

It was so sudden, so unexpected, this apparition in a pitch-black world of night, of a red, fiery, glowing devil, that Peter, stout-hearted as he was, let out a sudden shriek, and trembled like a leaf.

But if he trembled, the others went mad with fear. “Out! Out!” they shrieked, crowding to the stairway.

Upon their heels came the fantastic demon waving his scepter right and left and favoring first one and then another with smart blows, as they fought to be first at the stairway. Two reached it at one time and went scrambling down to be joined by the third a second later, who came tumbling down upon them just as they gained the third-floor landing.

Peter, however, stood his ground for a moment. Turning about at the head of the stairs he shouted, “Be you man or demon I will see what you have in you,” and rushed with his drawn sword upon the weird figure. That one simply stood aside as he rushed, and waved his hand in the direction of the man’s face.

“Ahew—ahew!” the brigand screamed with pain, for something choking and powdery was filling his eyes and throat. “Help—cowards—I am in the hands of a thousand devils. Help, I say!”

There was no sound outside save the noise of the men scrambling down the next stairway.

Peter stumbled blindly to the steps, and fairly slid down them, fearful lest the phantom should follow and give him another dose. But the phantom, though following, did not repeat his attack; he came slowly down the stairs after the retreating party, hurling little bombs of colored fire into the air, which as they exploded flooded the court with lights of rainbow hues.

Below, the din was deafening. The dog had worked his head loose from the bag which had been thrown over it, and was barking at the top of his lungs. Men were shouting and crying out in terror, forgetful of caution and the necessity for silence. Joseph who had been gagged and bound in the rear room of the family’s dwelling had gotten his feet loose from the ropes and was kicking with all his force against the wooden partition wall, Elzbietka was crying out for aid, and heads were beginning to emerge from open casements in all the adjoining buildings. Some one in the street outside was calling loudly for the watch, and Stas, having rescued himself from one predicament, was for no reason at all pulling at the rope of the bell that hung over the door, its clamor adding to the general uproar.

On the landing at the second floor the three retreating ruffians collided with the four men standing there and almost toppled them into the court. They had barely regained their balance when the lower supports of the stairs, which had been groaning already from the unaccustomed weight and traffic, suddenly collapsed and catapulted the whole company, amidst indescribable turmoil, into the court below. Peter, coming behind the three, managed to save himself by leaping nimbly to the threshold of Pan Andrew’s dwelling, but the flaming figure behind him remained momentarily on the stairs above the second floor where the supports and staircase held firm. Not for long did he remain there, however, for as Peter turned his back to disappear into the house the pursuer leaped from the lower step of the remaining stairway and landed squarely upon Peter, hurling him with a crash to the floor well inside the front room of Pan Andrew’s dwelling.

Below in the court there was a veritable pandemonium—the crashing apart of beam and beam where the staircase struck the ground, the shrieking of the frightened, the moaning of the injured—for two men had been pinned beneath the fallen staircase—the terror and distraction of the ruffians on guard below whose one idea now was to escape through the outer door before the arrival of the watch.

While all this was transpiring in the court the alchemist, who with his chemicals and powders had caused all the trouble, shook his heavy scepter, a club smeared with glowing resin, in the face of Peter who lay prostrate beneath him and demanded:

“Now—what do you seek here?”

But Peter had gotten some of his courage back, and besides the voice sounded more like that of a man than a devil. “I will not tell!”

“You will!”

“I will not.”

“You will be turned over to the watch.”

“I care not. They can learn nothing.”

“First let us have another look at you.”

He carefully drew a fire ball from a fold of his gown, keeping his weight upon the man under him and holding one hand at his throat. The ball he ignited by rubbing it against the floor and when it was burning he tossed it upon the stone hearth. There was a flash of light and the room was suddenly as bright as even day could make it.

But, after all, he did not look at Peter! For there was something else in the room that claimed his attention at once. It was the large round object that Peter had sought in Pan Andrew’s bed—there it lay upon the floor a short arm’s length away, gleaming like a thousand prisms of finest glass.

“Oho,” he exclaimed, “oho! So that’s it. Well, Pan Robber, it seems that your expedition was no ordinary one. No common house looting, this. . . . Lie still there, or I’ll sink these fingers into your windpipe,” for Peter had tried to wriggle to one side while the alchemist’s attention was taken with the new object.

“Who sent you here?” demanded the latter.

Peter was silent.

“But you must talk. Do you hear that—below?”

It was the night watch shouting, “Stand, in the name of the King.”

Peter whose courage was now revived, since he realized that it was a man and not a devil that he was dealing with, decided to try a little strategy.

“I will tell you all, if you will hide me here.”

“I give no promises. But tell me what you know.”

“Then see that.” He twisted one hand away from his captor as if to point toward the shining object on the floor which was now gleaming like a miniature sun in the last rays of the nearly burnt-out fire ball.

“I see it.” The alchemist glanced at it; the instant’s relaxation proved fatal, however, for with the moment the under man’s right hand came clear and tore the alchemist’s grip from his throat. In the struggle that followed, the alchemist was no match for the lithe and wiry Cossack. They rolled back and forth across the floor, tight in each other’s arms, they broke table legs, they brought down crockery from the shelves, they crashed into walls—and through all this the Cossack little by little overcame the advantage which the other had held in the beginning. First he twisted his legs in such fashion that he caught Pan Kreutz’s body as if in a vise, a trick that he had learned in the old days in the Ukraine, then he snapped his hands free from the other’s grip and wound his arms in under his shoulders. Tighter and tighter he drew arms and legs until the alchemist’s bones began to send out cracking noises; then with a quick movement he had reversed their positions and it was he who was on top and the alchemist underneath. “Smash!” He had bumped the man’s head against the floor with all his force, a blow sufficient to stun a giant, and in an instant had tossed him against the wall.

There the alchemist lay.

Like a panther moving to attack, Peter seized the object which he had come to procure, and leaped for the door.

He did not reach it unscathed. Pan Kreutz had also a last stratagem. It was fortunate for him that when the Cossack bumped his head against the floor, it was his mask that had borne the brunt of the blow—otherwise it is doubtful if he could ever have risen. But when the Cossack tossed him aside he lay there feigning unconsciousness, and as the other turned, he reached with a swiftness as quick as Peter’s into a pocket of his gown, where he had concealed a small package of explosive powder which might be ignited only by concussion. A wonder it was indeed that the powder had not exploded while they were wrestling on the floor.

This Pan Kreutz poised in his right hand as Peter made for the door. In another second the man would be gone—the alchemist caught his balance and hurled the package with all his strength.

It was a fair shot! It caught the Cossack with full force square on the back of the head and burst with a loud report.

Those below, now already turning their attention to the noise and the confusion on the second floor, heard the sharp explosion and saw the court flooded with light. In the midst of the glare there came a shriek that seemed to stir every corner of the courtyard, and almost immediately a man with hair flaming and garments streaked with fire sprang from the threshold of Pan Andrew’s lodging to the edge of the stairway that had not collapsed, and darted to the floor above. He stopped there only for one fleeting glance below. The court, blazing with torches and alive with tumult, was full of figures—students, watchmen, soldiers—so that escape that way was impossible. He leaped to the loft stairway and mounted it. Clutching at the roof which was not far above his head, he swung the low door back until it lay alongside the house and then climbed over it to the roofing. Along this he rushed like a meteor, his blazing hair streaming behind him in a trail of sparks—he leaped to an adjoining roof, and then to another, until he came to a place where the roofs sloped down to a wall, and there he was seen last.

A hue and cry was set up, but the man had escaped. Some said that he ran along the top of the wall and leaped into a monastery garden beyond—others that he only pretended to descend and had crept back among the housetops. At any rate he was not discovered.

When temporary stairs were finally put in place the watchmen released Joseph and his mother from the small room in their own quarters where they had lain bound, and brought Elzbietka down to them. Pan Kreutz, who had retired to his loft where he shed his torn gown and his mask, was bleeding and weak from his struggle and lost no time in getting into his bed. It was thought by all that the robbers had carried away nothing, but when Pan Andrew returned in the morning the house was searched thoroughly only to find that the treasure was missing. Spectators swore that Peter could not have carried anything with him when he made his perilous escape over the roofs, and a few said that they had noticed that his hands were empty.

However, hunt high or low as they did, the treasure was gone, and Pan Andrew, in spite of the views of the spectators, was fully convinced that the robber had stolen it.

Those of Peter’s band who had been injured in the fall of the stairs or had been unable to escape from the court were taken to jail and sentenced to various punishments. Several were put away into dungeons where they could do no more harm, two were banished “for a period of ninety-nine years,” and the rest were delivered to justice in other towns where they had committed previous crimes. But the most vigorous questioning could get no information from them, and it was concluded that they knew little of the designs of the leader upon Pan Andrew. As for Stas, his mother would have naught of him after this act of treachery. She lost little time in turning him out of her house and never would she receive him back again. It was heard some time later that he had become a waiter in the Inn of the Golden Elephant, but after the robbery of a guest there one night, he disappeared and was never heard of in Krakow again.

Pan Kreutz, although somewhat unnerved by his share in the encounter, met Pan Andrew in his lodging the next morning and described as fully as he could the man who had been leader in the events of the preceding night. He had scarcely finished when Pan Andrew sprang to his feet and struck the back of his chair with his fist.

“It is as I thought,” he exclaimed fiercely, “the man who has assailed me twice before. And now I know for a certainty that it is that half Mongol, half Cossack that calls himself Bogdan and is known as the Terrible throughout the Cossack lands. I have heard of his evil deeds many times, as has every dweller in the Ukraine. And it would be like him indeed to lead this villainy against me. He is a very devil, a man without pity, though I will say a man of the boldest breed that God ever benefited with the gift of breath. We, the Poles of the Ukraine, knew him as Peter of the Button Face, because of the scar which you have seen upon his right cheek, and by that scar I would doubtless have recognized him on the morning when he attacked me outside the Krakow Gate, had I not believed that he carried on his lawless deeds always nearer the border.”

Thus saying he went sorrowfully to his work of repairing the damage done by the Cossack band.