g for the night," he added,
facetiously.

"Slip past me, jump out of the window and run!" whispered the Cossack in
the Count's ear, in Russian.

"What are you saying in your infernal language?" asked the official.

"My friend advised me to run away," said the Count, coolly sitting down,
as though he were master of the situation. "Unfortunately for me, I was
not taught to use my legs in that way when I was a boy."

"I was," said the Cossack. "Good-evening, Master Policeman." He took his
hat from the peg on the wall where it had hung undisturbed throughout the
confusion, and bowing gravely to the man in uniform made as though he
would go out of the room.

"So, so, not quite so fast, my friend," said the policeman, putting
himself in the way. "Heigh! heigh! Stop him! Don't let him go," he bawled,
a second later.

Schmidt had paused a minute, watching his opportunity, then, taking a
quick step backwards, he had vaulted through the open window with the
agility of a cat, and was flying down the empty street at the speed only
attainable by that deceptive domestic animal when pressed for time and
anxious for its own safety.

"Sobaka!" growled Domnoff, disgusted at his companion's defection.

"Either talk in a language that human beings can understand, or do not
talk at all," said one of the two men who guarded him.

Seeing that pursuit was useless, the spokesman of the police turned to the
Count, twice as blustering and terrible as before.

"This settles the question," he said. "To the police station you go, you
and your bear-man of an accomplice. Potzbombardendonnerwetter! You
Sappermentskerls! I will teach you to resist the police, to steal dolls
and to jump out of windows! Now then, right about face--march!"

The Count did not stir from his chair. Dumnoff looked at him as though to
ask instructions of a superior.

"If you can manage one of them, I can take these two," he said in Russian.
Suiting the action to the word, he suddenly bent down, slipped his arms
round the legs of the two policemen, hurled them simultaneously head over
heels and then charged the crowd, head downwards, upsetting every one who
came in his way, and bursting into the street by sheer superior weight and
impetus. An instant later, his shock head appeared at the window through
which the Cossack had escaped.

"Come along!" he shouted to the Count, in his own language. "I have locked
the street door and they cannot get out. Jump through the