then a novice of
six weeks, attempted martyrdom by pretending that she herself was the
little Grand Duchess Marie. And when the Reds refused to believe her,
she demanded the privilege of dying beside her little friend. She even
insulted the Reds, defied them, taunted them until they swore to
return and cut her throat as soon as they finished with the Imperial
family. And then this same Palla Dumont, to whom you sold a house in
New York the other day, flew into an ungovernable passion; tried to
batter her way into the cellar; shattered half a dozen chapel chairs
against the oak door of the crypt behind which preparations for the
assassination were taking place; then, helpless, called on God to
interfere and put a stop to it. And, when deity, as usual, didn't
interfere with the scheme of things, this girl tore the white veil
from her face and the habit from her body and denounced as nonexistent
any alleged deity that permitted such things to be."

Shotwell gazed at Estridge in blank astonishment.

"Where on earth did you hear all that dope?" he demanded incredulously.

Estridge smiled: "It's all quite true, Jim. And Palla Dumont escaped
having her slender throat slit open only because a sotnia of
Kaladines' Cossacks cantered up, discovered what the Reds were up to
in the cellar, and beat it with Palla and another girl just in the
nick of time."

"Who handed you this cinema stuff?"

"_The other girl._"

"You believe her?"

"You can judge for yourself. This other girl was a young Swedish
soldier who had served in the Battalion of Death. It's really cinema
stuff, as you say. But Russia, to-day, is just one hell after another
in an endless and bloody drama. Such picturesque incidents,--the
wildest episodes, the craziest coincidences--are occurring by
thousands every day of the year in Russia.... And, Jim, it was due to
one of those daily and crazy coincidences that my sleigh, in which I
was beating it for Helsingfors, was held up by that same sotnia of the
Wild Division on a bitter day, near the borders of a pine forest.

"And that's where I encountered Palla Dumont again. And that's where I
heard--not from her, but from her soldier comrade, Ilse Westgard--the
story I have just told you."

For a while they continued to walk up and down in silence.

Finally Estridge said: "_There_ was a girl for you!"

"Palla Dumont!" nodded Shotwell, still too astonished to talk.

"No, the other.... An amazing girl.... Nearly s