Crazy as it might seem, there were people out on St Vladimir's
Hill despite the icy wind whistling between the snowdrifts with a sound like the voice of the devil himself.
If anyone were to climb up the Hill it could only be some complete outcast, a man who under no matter what government felt as much at home among his fellow men as a wolf in a pack of dogs - in a word, one of Victor Hugo's 'miserables'.
The sort of man who had good reason not to show himself in the City, or if so then at his own risk.
If he were in luck he might evade the patrols; if not, then it would be just too bad.
If a man like that found his way up on to the Hill one could only feel sorry for him out of sheer human pity.
The wind was so icy, one wouldn't send a dog out - after five minutes up there he would be back home and whining to be let in. But . . .
'Onlyfive o'clock.
Christ, we'll freeze to death . . .'
The trouble was that there was no way into the Upper City past the Belvedere and the water-tower because Prince Belorukov's headquarters was installed in the monastery building on Mikhail-ovsky Street, and cars with cavalry outriders or mounted machine-guns were passing by all the time . . .
'Damned officers, we'll never get through that way!'
And patrols everywhere.
It was no good trying to creep down the hillside terraces to the Lower City either, firstly because Alexandrovsky Street, which wound its way around the foot of the hill, was lit by rows of street-lamps, and secondly because it was heavily patrolled by the Germans, damn them.
Maybe someone might be able to slip down that way toward dawn, but by then they would be frozen to death.
As the icy wind whistled along the snowbound avenues there seemed to be another sound too - the mutter of voices somewhere near the snowbound railings.
'We can't stay here, Kirpaty, we'll freeze to death, I tell you.'
'Stick it out, Nemolyaka.
The patrols will be out till morning, then they turn in and sleep.
Once we can slip through to the Embankment we can hide at Sychukla's and warm ourselves up.'
There was a movement in the darkness along the railings as if three shadows blacker than the rest were huddling against the parapet and leaning over to look down at Alexandrovsky Street stretched out immediately below.
It was silent and empty, but at any moment two bluish cones of light might appear and some German cars drive past or the dark blobs of steel-helmeted troops, casting their sharp, foreshortened shadows under the street-lamps . . . and so near, they might be within reach . . .
One shadow broke away from the group on the Hill and his wolfish voice grated:
'Come on, Nemolyaka, let's risk it.
Maybe we can slip through . . .' *
Something equally bad was afoot in the Hetman's palace, where the activity seemed oddly out of place at that hour of night.
An elderly footman in sideburns scuttled like a mouse across the shiny parquet floor of a chamber lined with ugly gilt chairs.
From somewhere in the distance came the jerky ringing of an electric bell, the clink of spurs.
In the state bedroom the mirrors in their gloomy crowned frames reflected a strange, unnatural scene.
A thin, graying man with narrow, clipped moustaches on his foxy, clean-shaven, parchment-like face was pacing in front of the mirrors; he was dressed in a fancy Circassian coat with ornamental silver cartridge-cases.
Around him hovered three German officers and two Russian.
One of the latter wore a Circassian coat like the central figure, the other was in service tunic and breeches whose cut betrayed their tsarist Chevalier Guards origin despite the officer's wedge-shaped Hetmanite shoulder-straps.
They were helping the foxy man to change his clothes.
Off came the Circassian coat, the wide baggy trousers, the patent-leather boots.
In their place the man was encased in the uniform of a German major and he became no different from hundreds of other majors.
Then the door opened, the dusty palace drapes were pulled aside and admitted another man in the uniform of a German army medical officer carrying a large quantity of packages.
These he opened and with the contents skilfully bandaged the head of the newly-created German major until all that remained visible were one foxy eye and a thin mouth open just wide enough to show some of its gold and platinum bridgework.
The improper nocturnal activity in the palace continued for some time.
A German came out of the bedroom and announced in German to some officers loafing around in the chamber with the giltchairs and in a nearby hall that Major von Schratt had accidentally wounded himself in the neck while unloading a revolver and must be taken urgently to the German military hospital.
A telephone rang somewhere, followed by the shrill bird- like squeak of a field-telephone.
Then a noiseless German ambulance with Red Cross markings drove through the wrought-iron gates of the palace to a side entrance and the mysterious Major von Schratt, swathed in bandages and wrapped in a greatcoat, was carried out on a stretcher and placed inside the ambulance.
The ambulance drove away with a muffled roar as it turned out of the gates.
The bustle continued in the palace until the morning, lights burned on in gilded halls lined with portraits, the telephone rang frequently; a look something like insolence came over the expressions of the palace servants and their eyes glinted cheerfully ...
In a cramped little room on the first floor of the palace a man in the uniform of an artillery colonel picked up the telephone after carefully closing the door of the little whitewashed room.
He asked the unsleeping girl on the exchange for number 212.
When she had connected him he said 'merci', frowned hard and asked in a low, confidential voice:
'Is that the headquarters of the Mortar Regiment?' #
Alas, Colonel Malyshev was not fated to be able to sleep until half past six, as he had assumed.
At four o'clock in the morning the telephone bell in Madame Anjou's shop squealed with extreme insistence and the cadet on duty was obliged to waken the colonel.
The colonel woke up with remarkable speed. He grasped the situation as quickly and perceptively as though he had never been to sleep at all, and did not reproach the cadet for having interrupted his rest.
Soon afterwards he drove away in the motorcycle and sidecar, and when the colonel returned to Madame Anjou at five o'clock his eyebrows were contracted in as deep a military frown as had crossed the forehead of the colonel at the palace who had called up the Mortar Regiment. #