The Angel of the Revolution | Page 3

behind with his rent, and another payment
fell due the next day. That would be twelve shillings in all, and if it was
not paid he would be turned into the street.
As he raised himself from the bed he looked despairingly round the
bare, shabby room. No; there was nothing there that he could pawn or
sell. Everything saleable had gone already to keep up the struggle of
hope against despair. The bed and wash-stand, the plain deal table, and
the one chair that comprised the furniture of the room were not his. A
little carpenter's bench, a few worn tools and odds and ends of
scientific apparatus, and a dozen well-used books -- these were all that
he possessed in the world now, save the clothes on his back, and a plain

painted sea-chest in which he was wont to lock up his precious model
when he had to go out.
His model! No, he could not sell that. At best it would fetch but the
price of an ingenious toy, and without the secret of the two gases it was
useless. But was not that worth something? Yes, if he did not starve to
death before he could persuade any one that there was money in it.
Besides, the chest and its priceless contents would be seized for the rent
next day, and then --
"God help me! What am I to do?"
The words broke from him like a cry of physical pain, and ended in a
sob, and for all answer there was the silence of the room and the
inarticulate murmur of the streets below coming up through the open
windows. He was weak with hunger and sick with excitement, for he
had lived for days on bread and cheese, and that day he had eaten
nothing since the crust that had served him for breakfast. His nerves,
too, were shattered by the intense strain of his final trial and triumph,
and his head was getting light.
With a desperate effort he recovered himself, and the heroic resolution
that had sustained him through his long struggle came to his aid again.
He got up and poured some water from the ewer into a cracked cup and
drank it. It refreshed him for the moment, and he poured the rest of the
water over his head. That steadied his nerves and cleared his brain. He
took up the model from the floor, laid it tenderly and lovingly in its
usual resting-place in the chest. Then he locked the chest and sat down
upon it to think the situation over.
Ten minutes later he rose to his feet and said aloud --
"It's no use. I can't think on an empty stomach. I'll go out and have one
more good meal if it's the last I ever have in the world, and then
perhaps some ideas will come."
So saying, he took down his hat, buttoned his shabby velveteen coat to
conceal his lack of a waistcoat, and went out, locking the door behind

him as he went.
Five minutes' walk brought him to the Blackfriars Road, and then he
turned towards the river and crossed the bridge just as the motley
stream of city workers was crossing it in the opposite direction on their
homeward journey.
At Ludgate Circus he went into an eating-house and fared sumptuously
on a plate of beef, some bread and butter, and a pint mug of coffee. As
he was eating a paper-boy came in and laid an Echo on the table at
which he was sitting. He took it up mechanically, and ran his eye
carelessly over the columns. He was in no humour to be interested by
the tattle of an evening paper, but in a paragraph under the heading of
Foreign News a once familiar name caught his eye, and he read the
paragraph through. It ran as follows:--
RAILWAY OUTRAGE IN RUSSIA.
When the Berlin-Petersburg express stopped last night at Kovno, the
first stop after passing the Russian frontier, a shocking discovery was
made in the smoking compartment of the palace car which has been on
the train for the last few months. Colonel Dornovitch, of the Imperial
Police, who is understood to have been on his return journey from a
secret mission to Paris, was found stabbed to the heart and quite dead.
In the centre of the forehead were two short straight cuts in the form of
a T reaching to the bone. Not long ago Colonel Dornovitch was
instrumental in unearthing a formidable Nihilist conspiracy, in
connection with which over fifty men and women of various social
ranks were exiled for life to Siberia. The whole affair is wrapped in the
deepest mystery the only clue in the hands of the police being the fact