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At midnight Nikolka undertook a most important and very timely piece of work. First he took a dirty wet rag from the kitchen, and rubbed off the belly of the tiled Dutch stove the words:

Long live Russia!

God Save the Tsar!

Down with Petlyura!

Then, with the enthusiastic participation of Lariosik, a more important task was put in hand. Alyosha's Browning automatic was neatly and soundlessly removed from the desk, together with

two spare magazines and a box of ammunition for it. Nikolka checked the weapon and found that his elder brother had fired six of the seven rounds in the magazine.

'Good for him . . ' Nikolka murmured to himself.

There was not, of course, the slightest likelihood of Lariosik being a traitor. It was inconceivable that an educated man should be on Petlyura's side at all, and in particular a gentleman who signed promissory notes for seventy-five thousand roubles and who sent sixty-three-word telegrams. The Colt automatic that had belonged to Nai-Turs and Alyosha's Browning were thoroughly greased with engine oil and paraffin. Imitating Nikolka, Lariosik rolled up his shirtsleeves and helped to grease and pack the weapons into a long, deep cake tin. They worked in a hurry, for as every decent man who has taken part in a revolution knows very well - no matter who is in power - searches take place from 2.30 a.m. to 6.15 a.m. in winter and from midnight to 4 a.m. in summer. Even so the work was held up, thanks to Lariosik, who in examining the mechanism of the ten-round Colt-system automatic pushed the magazine into the butt the wrong way round, and the job of getting it out again took a great deal of effort and a considerable quantity of oil. Apart from that, there was a further unexpected hindrance: the tin, containing the revolvers, Nikolka's and Alexei's shoulder-straps, Nikolka's chevrons and Alexei's picture of the murdered Tsarevich, wrapped tightly inside with waterproof oilcloth and outside with long, sticky strips of electrical insulating tape - the tin was too big to go through the little upper pane, the only part of the window left unsealed in winter.

The box had to be really well hidden. Not everybody was as idiotic as Vasilisa. Nikolka had already worked out that morning how to hide the box. The wall of their house, No. 13, almost but not quite touched the wall of No. 11 next door, leaving a gap of only about two feet. Only three of the windows of No. 13 were in that wall - one on the corner, from Nikolka's room, two from the library next to it which were quite useless (it was permanently dark) and lower down there was a dim little window covered by a grating which belonged to Vasilisa's cellar, whilst the wall of the

neighbouring No. 11 was completely blind and windowless. Imagine a perfect artificial canyon two feet wide, dark, and invisible from the street and even inaccessible from the back yard except to the occasional small boy. It was as a boy that Nikolka, once when playing cops and robbers, had squeezed into the gap between the houses, stumbling over piles of bricks, and he remembered exactly how there had been a double line of metal spikes in the wall of No. 13 stretching from ground level right up to the roof. Earlier, before No. 11 had been built, there had probably been a fire escape bolted to these spikes, which had later been removed, the spikes being left in place. That evening, as he thrust his hand out through the little upper window-pane, it did not take Nikolka two minutes of fumbling to find one of the spikes. The solution was plain, but the tin, tied up with a triple thickness of stout cord, with a loop at one end, was too large to go through the window.

'Obviously we must open up the rest of the window', said Nikolka, as he jumped down from the window-ledge.

Having paid suitable tribute to Nikolka's intelligence and ingenuity, Lariosik set about unsealing the main casement. This back-breaking work took at least half an hour, as the swollen frames refused to open. Finally they managed to open first one side and then the other, in the course of which the glass on Lariosik's side shattered in a long, web-like crack.

'Put the light out!' Nikolka ordered.

The light went out, and a freezing blast of air lashed into the room. Nikolka eased himself half way out into the icy black space and hooked the loop round one of the spikes, from which the tin hung at the end of a two foot length of cord. Nothing was visible from the street, since the fireproof wall of No. 13 was built at an angle to the street. The very narrow gap between the two houses was covered by the large signboard belonging to a dressmaker's workshop in No. 11. The tin could only be seen by someone actually climbing into the gap, which no one was likely to do before spring thanks to the huge piles of snow which had been shovelled out of the yard, forming an ideal fence in front of the

house. The chief advantage of the hiding place, however, was that it could be checked without opening the main casement of the window: one only had to open the little pane at the top, push one's hand through and feel for the cord, taut as a 'cello string. Perfect.

The light was switched on again, and kneading the putty which Anyuta had left over from the fall, Nikolka sealed up the casement again. Even if by some miracle the tin were found, they would always be ready with the answer: 'What? Whose box? What revolvers, Tsarevich . . . ? Impossible! No idea. God only knows who put it out there! Somebody must have climbed up on the roof and hung it from there. Not many other people around here? Well, so what? We're peaceful, law abiding folk, why should we want a picture of the Tsarevich . . .'

'A perfect job, brilliantly done, I swear it', said Lariosik. It could not have been better - easy to reach, yet outside the apartment.

*

It was three o'clock in the morning. Evidently no one would be coming tonight. Her eyelids heavy with exhaustion Elena tiptoed out into the dining-room. It was Nikolka's turn to take over from her by Alexei's bedside. He would keep watch from three till six, then Lariosik from six till nine.

They spoke in whispers.

'So if anyone asks, he's got typhus', Elena whispered. 'We must stick to that story, because Wanda has already been up from downstairs trying to find out what's the matter with Alexei. I said it was suspected typhus. She probably didn't believe me, because she gave me a very funny look . . . and she kept on asking questions -how were we, where had we all been, wasn't one of us wounded. Not a word about his being wounded.'

'No, of course not', Nikolka gestured forcibly. 'Vasilisa is the biggest coward in the world! If anything happened he'd babble to anybody that Alexei had been wounded if it meant saving his own skin.'

'The swine!' said Lariosik. 'What a filthy thing to do.'

Alexei lay in a coma. After the injection his expression had become quite calm, his features looked sharper and finer. The soothing poison coursed through his bloodstream and kept vigil. The gray figures had ceased to act as though they belonged to his room, they departed about their affairs, the mortar had finally been removed altogether. Whenever strangers did appear they now behaved decently, fitting in with the people and things which belonged legitimately in the Turbins' apartment. Once Colonel Malyshev appeared and sat down in an armchair, but he smiled as much as to say that all would be for the best. He no longer growled menacingly, no longer filled the room with heaps of paper. It was true he did burn some documents, but he refrained from touching Alexei's framed diplomas and the picture of his mother, and he did his burning in the pleasant blue flame of a spirit lamp, which was reassuring because the lighting of the spirit lamp was usually followed by an injection. Madame Anjou's telephone bell rang constantly.