'How amazing, absolutely amazing, that I wasn't hit.
A sheer miracle.
God must have worked a miracle', thought Nikolka as he stood up.
'Now I've actually seen a miracle.
Notre Dame de Paris.
Victor Hugo.
I wonder what's happened to Elena?
And Alexei?
Obviously the order to tear off our shoulder-straps means disaster.'
Nikolka jumped up, smothered from head to foot in snow, thrust the revolver into his greatcoat pocket and ran off down the street.
Finding the first pair of gates on his right hand still open, Nikolka ran through the echoing gateway and found himself in a dim, squalid courtyard with sheds of red brick along its right-hand side and a pile of firewood on the left. Assuming that the back door leading to the adjoining courtyard was in the middle, he ran towards it across the slippery snow and bumped heavily into a man in a sheepskin jerkin.
The man had a red beard and little eyes that were quite plainly dripping with hatred.
Snub-nosed, with a sheepskin hat on his head, he was a caricature of the Emperor Nero.
As though playfully the man clasped Nikolka in a hug with his left arm and with his right seized Nikolka's left arm and started to twist it behind his back.
For a few seconds Nikolka was completely dazed.
'God, he's caught me and he hates me . . .
He's one of Petlyura's men . . .'
'Ah, you swine!' croaked the red-bearded man, breathing hard. 'Where d'you think you're going, eh?' Then he suddenly howled: 'Got you, cadet!
Think we wouldn't recognise you just because you've torn off your shoulder-straps?
Now I've got you!'
Nikolka was seized with fury.
He sat down backwards so hard that the half-belt at the back of his greatcoat snapped, rolled over and freed himself from red-beard's grasp with a superhuman effort.
For a second he lost sight of him as they were back to back, then he swung around and saw him.
The man with the red beard was not only unarmed, he was not even a soldier, merely a janitor.
A pall of rage like a red blanket floated across Nikolka's eyes and immediately gave way to a sensation of complete self-confidence.
Cold frosty air was sucked into Nikolka's mouth as he bared his teeth like a wolf-cub.
Determined to kill the beast if only the chamber were loaded, he wrenched the revolver out of his pocket.
His voice, when he spoke, was so strange and terrible that he did not recognise it. 'I'll kill you, you bastard!'
Nikolka hissed as he fumbled with the Colt, realising as he did so that he had forgotten how to fire it.
Seeing that Nikolka was armed the janitor fell to his knees in terror and despair and whined, changing miraculously from a Nero into a snake:
'Ah, your honor!
Oh sir . . .'
Nikolka would still have fired, but the revolver refused to work.
'Hell! It's unloaded!' flashed through Nikolka's mind.
Shaking and covering his face with his hand the janitor fell back from his knees on to his haunches and let out a sickening howl that infuriated Nikolka.
At a loss how to close that gaping maw framed in its copper-red beard, and desperate because the revolver would not fire, Nikolka leaped upon the janitor like a fighting cock and smashed the butt into the man's teeth, running the risk of shooting himself as he did so.
Nikolka's fury instantly drained away.
The janitor leaped to his feet and ran away out of the gateway through which Nikolka had come.
Crazed with fear, the janitor could no longer howl, and just ran, stumbling and slipping on the icy ground. Once he looked round and Nikolka saw that half his beard was stained dark red.
Then he vanished.
Nikolka turned and ran past the sheds to the end of the yard where the back gate should have opened onto Razezhaya Street, but as he reached it he was overcome with despair.
'Done for.
I'm too late.
Caught.
God, even my revolver's useless.'
In vain he shook the enormous padlocked bolt.
There was nothing to be done.
As soon as Nai-Turs' cadets had escaped through the courtyard the red-bearded janitor had obviously locked the gate giving on to Razezhaya Street and now Nikolka was faced by a completely insurmountable obstacle -an iron wall, smooth and solid from bottom to top.
Nikolka lurned around, glanced up at the lowering, overcast sky, and noticed a black fire-escape leading all the way up to the roof of the four-storey house.
'Maybe I could climb up there?' he wondered, and at that moment he had a sudden foolish recollection of a colored illustration in a book: Nat Pinkerton in a yellow jacket and a red mask climbing up just the same sort of fire-escape.