Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine #097v018 (1951-12)

The parrot by Walter Duranty[3]

Walter Duranty needs no introduction these troubled times. You all remember him as the famous foreign correspondent of “The New York Times” who was stationed in Moscow for nearly twenty years, who won the Pulitzer Prize for reporting in 1932, and who was the author of two such different books as I WRITE AS I PLEASE and ONE LIFE, ONE KOPECK.

In 1928, Waite; Duranty won first prize for the best short story of the year — “The Parrot.” The award was made by the O. Henry Memorial Committee, three of whose Final Judges that year were Blanche Colton Williams, Chairman of the Committee and Head of the Department of English at Hunter College; Frances Gilchrist Wood, author; and Professor Franklin T. Baker of Columbia University. Actually, Miss Williams and Mrs. Wood both ranged “The Parrot” as the Number One short story of the year, while Professor Balder ranged it Number Six; but in the average ratings based on the combined appraisals of all five Final Judges, Mr. Duranty s story achieved first place.

Blanche Colton Williams was impressed by Mr. Duranty’s “realistic detail.” Mrs. Wood was gripped by the instant conviction that “here is a story of the actual Russia, neither guessed at nor faked” Professor Balder described “The Parrot” as “a grim, realistic bit of melodrama.”

Two further comments: first, this is a fascinating tale of a boy detective in Russia — twelve-year-old Sergey McTavish, orphan son of a Scottish soldier of fortune and a German farmers daughter; second, this story was first published in 1928 — which accounts for some of the anachronisms, including the amazing one in which Mr. Duranty says that “It is a habit the Russians have, to deprecate everything Russian.” Try and catch the Russians deprecating anything Russian now!

The boxcar rattled and swayed as the train jerked slowly out of the station, but the big sergeant standing at the open door balanced himself easily in his thick felt boots.

He held Sergey McTavish by the collar of his astrakhan tunic and the seat of his breeches, kicking and wriggling like a retriever pup. Then he swung the boy up level with his shoulder and threw him sprawling on a snowdrift.

“There,” he said, “you young devil, that will teach you to steal potatoes from the army and sell them to dirty food speculators. You have the red head of an imp from hell, and the black heart of a capitalist. We have done with you.”

So ended the six-months’ career of Sergey McTavish as mascot of the seventh battalion of Red Army Riflemen.

During those months he had tasted victory — in the swift advance to the gates of Warsaw — and defeat — in the hungry flight back across the frontier; he had come to swear like a Russian soldier, who swears with strength and zest; and he had looted gloriously — the astrakhan cloak on which the battalion tailor had worked all night, jolting cross-legged in a mule-cart, to make round cap, tunic, and breeches. But he had not learned discipline or honesty; neither over-current in the Red Army of those days; and so here he was, gasping for breath on a snowdrift in the outskirts of a little town in the Ural foothills.

When he got his breath back, Sergey scrambled to his feet and turned to curse the big sergeant as worst he knew how. But the tail of the train was blank and black in the December twilight, growing smaller every second, too small to be worth cursing.

Sergey Sergeyitch McTavish, twelve-year-old orphan, son of a Scottish soldier of fortune and a German farmer’s daughter from the old Volga “colonies,” was alone, friendless, penniless, and hungry in a windswept freight yard, with nothing in sight but the meager huts of the station and rows of roofless cars whose broken sides stuck out like jagged teeth. Sergey regretted now that he had been so smart and witty a few hours before at the expense of the station commandant, a thick-headed Lett. Mis comrades on the train had roared with laughter and kept off the angry Lett when Sergey dived among them for refuge. The light in the station hut meant warmth and food now, but Letts are a stubborn and unforgiving people. No, there was nothing for it but to tramp the three miles back to that dismal town.

Damn potatoes anyway, and speculators! If they had only left him the money! That brute of a sergeant had grabbed every kopeck.

But a veteran of the Polish war knows worse things than hunger or cold or darkness. The boy dragged his cap down over his ears and set off toward the town.

As he crept under the second of three lines of dismantled freight-cars, his nose caught full blast the smell of cooking food. Right before him in the third row, one car was intact, light shining behind the little window in the door, and smoke pouring from the stovepipe at the roof-corner.

Without hesitation Sergey banged his fist upon the door. It slid open, immediately, and a girl looked down at him.

“Come in, stranger,” she cried. “We are expecting you. But tell me quickly, is it to heaven or to hell that we owe the pleasure of your visit?”

“He who sent me here said I had the red head of an imp from hell,” replied Sergey, swinging up by her outstretched hand and slamming the door behind him. “So you can understand I find it cold here, and am hungry, after my journey.”

The girl brushed off his cap and pulled him forward under the kerosene lamp which hung from the middle of the roof.

“Red as hell’s flames,” she muttered admiringly. “That should keep you warm, and we will fill your belly. My father, here, just said it would take a saint or a devil to conquer my problem, and I told him as you knocked that even Saint Nicholas the Wonder-worker would never dare risk his wings in Russia today.”

A roar of laughter from a heap of straw in the corner near the stove.

“ ’Tis but a little imp for so great a task, Marfoosha, and I doubt if the Prince of Devils himself is a match for the Baba Papagai, who beyond doubt is his own grandmother.” There were three people in the car, the girl, comely and slim with a tangle of blonde hair, red shirt tucked into short blue kilt, and high black leather boots; the man, in khaki uniform, lying on the straw, fat brown cheeks, quick little black eyes in a bush of iron-gray hair, and whiskers; and a small bent figure by the stove, so wrapped in a service overcoat of the old Imperial army that nothing was visible but a white wisp of beard, a bald shining pate, and two pink pointed cars.

“Comrade imp,” said the girl, “I present my grandfather, who lives alone in this car, being wise and having money, but not wise enough to help me in my trouble; and my father, who is commandant of the prison, but unable to save my lover, his prisoner, from...”

“Don’t forget to present Comrade Soup also,” broke in the old man with a chuckle, “and little Comrade Vodka in his bottle, who is best of all.” And, plunging an iron ladle into the steaming pot, he filled an earthen bowl and passed it to the hungry boy.

Twice Sergey emptied the bowl, breaking chunks of black bread into the hot liquid. Then he gulped a stinging mouthful of spirit from the bottle, and taking a palmful of green flake mahorka and a scrap of newspaper from the old man, twisted the cone-shaped cigarette of the Russian soldier, lighted the upturned flap with a sulphur match and, putting the small end of the cone between his lips, puffed out a cloud of evil-smelling smoke.

“What is this trouble you speak of,” he asked, “and who is the Parrot Woman, the Baba Papagai?”

All three of his hosts spoke at once, in noisy excitement. There was a young man, a foreigner, a prisoner, an American, a soldier, who had come somehow from somewhere eastward on a train, young and cheerful and clever with his hands beyond belief; and the girl Marfoosha loved him, and he had mended the electric light for the prison and later for the whole town, and at first he was quite dumb like a beast, but now he spoke humanly enough after several months; and two weeks ago the Soviet had agreed to let Marfoosha marry him, because they wanted to keep him in the town to start again the nail factory as he had promised, and because he was cheerful and had blue eyes and brown curly hair, and Marfoosha loved him and wanted to marry him, and would die too if he were killed.

This Sergey learned first, because the girl talked fastest and loudest, but through it all beat like the drum in a regimental band the name of the Parrot Woman, Baba Papagai, who was a witch and a demon and the grandmother of all the devils.

She had a familiar spirit, this terrible woman, a parrot, red and gray, in a wire cage; and when it bit you, you were guilty; and when it didn’t, you were innocent; but it always bit you, and so you were always shot.

Nobody knew where she came from, but it was said she was the widow of a famous revolutionary who had worked in a factory at Ekaterinburg, and had been shot by the Czar’s army in 1906. And now she was president of a “Flying Tribunal,” that moved about the whole province judging counter-revolutionaries; and always she made them put a finger in the parrot’s cage, and always it bit them, and then they were shot. And it was reported that she lived on the smell of blood arid must kill a man every day or she would die and the Devil, her grandson, would fly off with her. And when the Soviet knew she was coming to hold court in the town, they were all very frightened, because there was only one victim, the ex-manager of the factory, who twice had tried to escape from the town and had been prevented. One man would never be enough for the Baba Papagai. She would suspect the Soviet of being lukewarm in the cause of revolution, and perhaps put some of them to the trial of that horrid parrot, as had happened before elsewhere, always with fatal results.

So four days ago the Soviet had held a meeting hastily and in secret, and had decided to sacrifice their American. They were sorry, but it was his head or theirs, no argument was possible. They’d put high hopes on his reopening the factory; but after all, he was a stranger and a prisoner, and it was said the Americans were fighting to help the counterrevolution, and it was he or they, and finally there was just a chance that the parrot wouldn’t like the taste of foreigners and fail to bite him.

Marfoosha and her father, who, as prison commandant, felt most uneasy about the whole affair, had come to ask the advice of the hermit in the boxcar. But he had been of no help to them, and the father had said it would take an angel or a devil to find the way out of the mess, and just at that second Sergey had knocked, and said at once he was an imp from hell, so what would he suggest?

Sergey’s Scotch blood whispered caution. He puffed his mahorka cigarette and declared profoundly that there was a solution for every problem, but this case being extremely difficult, he had better set eyes first on the woman and her parrot, to say nothing of the American and the ex-manager of the factory, before deciding what should be done. There was a twinkle in Marfoosha’s eye as she received his verdict, and the boy was reassured as to the reality of her belief in his diabolic origin; but the prison commandant and his elderly parent were ready in approval.

“Never drive pigs too swiftly,” said the ancient, banging the cork of his vodka bottle hard against the side of the car, and burying it in the recesses of his greatcoat. “Let our Comrade Imp view the situation for himself, and maybe he will be able to make a plan. For me, I am at a loss — I admit it freely; the young man must die: there is no doubt of it.”

“Everyone must die some day,” replied his son, “and I, as commandant of a prison, know that some die quicker than others. But this American is a friendly youth, and clever with his hands, and Marfoosha loves him dearly; so I want his life saved and no trouble with this infernal old woman. If the flame-headed Imp can help us, I, Alexei Petrovich, promise that he shall have all the food he needs in this cold country, and a warm corner by my fire to toast his toes till they are as red as his hair.”

All of which sounded good to Sergey McTavish as he said goodbye to the old man, and accompanied Marfoosha and her father across the cold white plain to the little town.

Far off, beneath the low roofs of the town, windows poured a flood of light upon the snow.

“What makes your town so bright?” asked Sergey.

“I told you the American fixed our electric machines for us,” said the prison warden. “I guess you are surprised to see one of our towns using electricity these days.”

He emphasized the word “our” with a faintly sneering accent. It is a habit the Russians have, to deprecate everything Russian.

“And now,” he went on mournfully, “even this town won’t have any electricity any more. When he’s gone, the whole works will be kaput in no time. Oh, that Baba Papagai and her parrot! To think that a miserable bird could bring such trouble upon us!”

“You say it’s a bird?” asked Sergey, who had never seen a parrot in his life and had not the least idea whether it was bird or beast or perhaps a new kind of Soviet commissar. “Well, if it’s only a bird that’s worrying you, why don’t you kill it?”

“Kill it!” almost shouted Marfoosha. “Why, you might as well talk of killing Lenin!”

“Shh!” cried her father sharply. “You mustn’t talk like that!” He caught Sergey by the shoulder. “See here, little comrade, you don’t understand. It’s not a bird, really; it only looks like a bird. But it talks like a man, and it tells her, the Baba, what she must do. Who shall say which is the master, the parrot or the parrot woman? Everyone knows there are things like that, which come out of the dark to serve those who sell their souls to Darkness. You can’t kill them, ever, the dark spirits, but in the old days a priest could drive them away with the name of God and holy water. And now the priests are spat upon and hide in holes, and God has turned His face from our Russia, which is become a plaything for the evil ones.”

Sergey McTavish shivered. This was ill talk, of spirits from the dark, and the man’s fear was infectious. But he bit tight on the life rule which had steeled him and his father and his father’s father who died to check Osman Pasha’s last sortie from Plevna — “No Scot can show fear before a Russian.”

“That is stuff for women and children,” he said stoutly; “but we men of the Red Army care neither for gods nor devils; and besides, why worry about the ford till you come to the river?”

His companions made no answer, and all three trudged on in silence.

The prison was a large house set back among tall trees whose branches hung glittering with frost in the light of an electric arc-lamp.

In the high, square entrance hall two men were sitting before a huge fireplace, ablaze with round birch logs thick as a man’s body. The younger leaped up as they entered, tall and loose-limbed, in a uniform of dark mustard color such as Sergey had never seen. In two strides, so it seemed, he was across the room, lifting Marfoosha right off her feet into his arms.

There was more delight than anger in her squeal of protest.

“Enough, Mahlinkie, enough,” cried Marfoosha in a stifled voice. “Put me down — we have a visitor, bad-mannered one!”

Regaining her feet, she flung her arm round Sergey’s shoulder. “This is my American, little comrade; his name is Djim, but that is a dog’s name, not a man’s, so I call him Mahlinkie, the little one, because he is so tall.” She laughed gayly and pushed the boy forward, pulling off his hat with her other hand. “Look, Mahlinkie, it’s fire, but it doesn’t burn.”

“Fortheluvamike!”

Sergey McTavish did not understand this American greeting, but something within him called forth two half-forgotten words in reply. “Scottish, gorrd-am-you-sirr.”

The effect was startling. High in the air went Sergey in those strong young arms, while a torrent of unfamiliar words beat upon his cars. What a din they made! Sergey, six feet from the ground, beside himself with excitement, yelling his new found slogan, the American shouting strange noises, and Marfoosha dancing around.

The prison warden and his friend by the lire rushed forward in panic. “Are you mad?” cried the former, catching his daughter around the waist. “Stop this uproar. You don’t know what’s happened. She is here already, staying in Petrusha’s house.”

Marfoosha halted as if struck by lightning, and the American stiffened, holding Sergey in mid-air.

Slowly he lowered the boy to the ground, still grasping him firmly under the arms. An instant’s silence; then the warden continued: “She came tonight, with her parrot — saints defend us — and holds court tomorrow. Very angry when she heard there were only two eases. She will judge the factory manager in the morning; and the next day” — he jerked his thumb towards the American — “it’s his turn. They say we are lucky. He’s a foreigner — she was quite interested and said no more about our scarcity of prisoners.”

There was no answer to these words save a low sound from Marfoosha. She had fainted.

Sergey McTavish awoke next morning from a tormenting dream of gray devil-birds with red tails pecking at his breast, to find Marfoosha and her American standing beside the bench on which he had passed the night before the fire.

The girl’s face was red and swollen with weeping, but her lover wore a friendly grin.

“Wake up, little comrade, wake up and eat your breakfast, for there’s work for you to do.” She had tried to speak cheerfully, but as Sergey rubbed his eyes she sank down in a heap beside the bench, sobbing desperately.

The tall American tried vainly to comfort her: “Marfoosha, my darling, my baby girl, don’t worry.”

Sergey McTavish sat upright. How stupid girls were, not to understand that death was part of a soldier’s job! He pulled Marfoosha’s hair sharply. “Stop crying,” he said, “and tell me what’s the matter.”

Marfoosha shook herself free. “All right,” she said to her lover, “but you go and let me talk to him alone.”

And then to Sergey: “The Baba Papagai is in a frightful humor. We know it from Petrusha. She had her parrot at breakfast with her, early, two hours ago before it was light, and sat there talking, talking. She said to him, ‘Belogvardeyetz’ (White Guard), and the parrot answered, ‘Belogvardeyetz,’ and then the Baba Papagai laughed and the parrot said over and over again, ‘Belogvardeyetz,’ and the Baba Papagai laughed some more. You, Sergey Sergeyitch, do you know what that means?”

“No,” said Sergey uneasily, with a spoonful of kasha poised halfway to his lips.

“Death! That’s all! Just death for my American!” Marfoosha laid her head on her arms, then straightened up and rattled on breathlessly: “The court opens at ten o’clock. You go there. It will be just a general rehearsal. The Baba Papagai is having her rehearsal this morning. The real show is when my American comes before her.” Marfoosha’s voice faltered. Sergey again stopped eating.

“She knows it. She told Petrusha she had heard of this American in town. She said she had never before had the chance to try her papagai on an American. She cursed America. She said it was the sink of all iniquity, a den of wolves, the castle of capitalism. She said that all Americans were White Guards, and when she said ‘American’ to her parrot this morning, it just answered, ‘Belogvardeyetz.’ Sergey, go see for yourself.”

Sergey put the half-empty kasha bowl on the floor. He had lost his appetite.

“What time is it?” he asked.

“Near ten,” answered Marfoosha. “Come with me — I’ll show you the way.”

Ten minutes from her home Marfoosha slopped, took Sergey by the arm, and pointed straight ahead.

“There it is,” she said.

“What, the church?” asked Sergey.

“It used to be the church. Don’t you see the guard in front? Now go, please, and come to us as soon as it is over.” Marfoosha took Sergey’s head in her arms, pressed it to her heart until he struggled to get free, then released him with a push.

Sergey McTavish recovered his balance, frowned a moment at the retreating figure, then proceeded warily toward the church. There was nothing strange to him about a Cheka trial taking place there. Even when other buildings were available, the “Flying Tribunals of the All Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolutions” had found that their sessions made a far greater impression on their White Guard enemies it they were held in the church. It appealed, too, to the Red sense of humor.

In front of the building, beneath an ikon of the Virgin Mary, a Red Guard paced up and down, his conical cap pulled tight over his ears to meet the threadbare collar of an old gray overcoat. The buttons, cut off because they had borne the insignia of the Czar, were replaced with string. When Sergey approached, the Red Guard dropped the butt of his rifle nonchalantly in the snow, crying, “What do you want, little princeling?” with an ironic wink at the boy’s astrakhan suit.

“Don’t call me names, comrade,” grinned back Sergey. “I’m Red Army too. This is loot, issued me by the regimental tailor, Seventh Battalion Rifles. Just lost touch with headquarters. Now be a good comrade and give me a cigarette and let me go inside and get warm a bit.”

The sentry laughed, said he’d no tobacco but obligingly turned his back while Sergey slipped past into the church.

For a moment he could see nothing in the dim interior save two tall candles on the altar above which an ikon glittered with gold and jewels.

Very quietly he groped his way forward to the last of a number of rough wooden benches which had been placed in the nave, and sat down behind rows of people bent forward in eager attention. At the other end of the church a man was speaking in a high-pitched voice, trailing off at times into falsetto. The words came rapidly, tumbling over one another, hardly intelligible. Sergey could only catch a phrase now and then — “never... Czar’s government... always tried to work for the people... worker myself... not my fault... education... no counter-revolutionary, believe me, believe me, believe me.”

Cutting this babble like a saw, another voice, metallic, harsh, rasped a single word: “Belogvardeyetz!” (White Guard)

Then a loud laugh. Then silence.

Sergey’s eyes, by now accustomed to the semi-darkness, sought the source of the inhuman voice. With a shiver of interest he realized the word “Belogvardeyetz!” had come from a cage swinging beneath a stiff gold embroidery attached like a banner to a pole, which stood at the left of the altar. Within the cage a gray-red bird moved listlessly on its perch. That was the bird that talked like a man, but who had laughed?

Near the altar a woman was rising to her feet behind a table draped with red cloth. Erect, she loomed enormous, six feet or more in height. Traces of mocking laughter were still about her lips, but her eyes bore no sign of it. The flickering light gleamed on abnormally protruding eyeballs, threw into relief a network of swollen veins on either temple, and showed her thickened throat bursting from the collar of a soldier’s tunic.

Sergey felt his hands, shake as they fumbled for his pockets. He needed no one to tell him this was the Baba Papagai.

With a gesture of impatience she pulled off the cap, revealing a thin growth of gray hair. The woman was nearly bald.

She turned to the left where a man was standing, thin and crumpled, between two soldiers with fixed bayonets.

“Counter-revolutionary!” she bellowed suddenly. The man staggered. “I know what you want to say, citizen. You never carried on counterrevolution. You never harmed or oppressed anyone, never resisted the proletariat; in fact, you admire the revolution intensely and think Lenin and Trotsky the greatest men in history. Yes, I know all that; I’ve heard the same story before, often.” Her voice deepened and again became harsh. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and resumed: “Fortunately, fortunately, we have here with us the means of seeing beneath those fine words, right to the inner secrets of your heart. You are surprised, perhaps, that an ignorant old woman like me should see, should be able to know the secret heart of an ‘intelligenter’ like you; but I don’t pretend so much. It is this wise bird here, who is older than I, older, it may be, than anyone in this town, who by long experience can recognize a counter-revolutionary at first glance, can smell the black soul of him in one sniff.”

Her voice had become monotonous, rising and falling like that of a priest reciting some familiar ritual.

“Walk forward, my friend of the people, walk forward, and put your finger into the cage of my little comrade, that he may take a sniff at it. Perhaps you are innocent, as you would have us believe. The little comrade will know, because he never makes a mistake. If you are innocent, he will do you no harm, will not touch your finger; but if your hand has offended against the People” — again that inhuman roar — “he will bite it to the bone, and after my judgment, you shall receive your punishment.”

She made a sign to the soldiers, who took the cringing man by the arms and dragged him toward the parrot’s cage. The man shrank within his coat as if wishing to wither up and slip out of his clothes, leaving them in the hands of his guards. They grasped him more firmly and urged him forward. The candlelight glanced from their bayonets and played across the bulging eyes of the Baba Papagai as she mockingly reassured the terror-stricken figure in their hands.

“Have no fear, little servant of dogs. That bird is a proletarian. You said you loved the workers. If it’s true, the papagai will never touch you. Nor will I.”

There was no sound save the prisoner’s feet dragging across the floor as the soldiers carried him to the last instance of justice. He had slumped down in their arms so that when they reached the foot of the golden banner, his head fell in the shadow cast by the bottom of the cage. In the attempt to raise him upright, the guards brought his forehead heavily against it. The impact shook the parrot. It ruffled its feathers, stretched its wings, brought them tightly back against its body, and hopped expectantly forward on its perch. Its indifference was gone; its beady eyes were watchful.

A murmur of awe, or wonderment, or horror, floated from the shadowy figures which filled the benches. It was cut short by the voice of the Baba Papagai.

“Carry out the procedure, Soldiers of the Revolution. If the servant of dogs cannot lift his hand, lift it for him.”

The prisoner struggled. One of the soldiers deftly twisted the left arm of the writhing man behind his back and pushed it upward until he gasped: “I’ll do it.” The soldier released the pressure on the twisted arm and the prisoner stood upright. He lifted his right hand with extended forefinger and thrust it forward by short jerks. Twice he dropped his hand, and twice the soldier pressed the hammer-lock until he gasped again: “I’ll do it.”

The third time, his finger reached the cage. It trembled so that he was unable to poke it through the bars. The other guard grasped it firmly and pushed it into the cage.

The parrot eyed the prisoner’s hand. Cocking its head on one side, it cast its beady gaze appraisingly at the forefinger that shook as though playfully just below its beak. Its claws against the perch made a faint scratching sound which seemed to reverberate in the silence.

The parrot bent its neck, and — rubbed its beak on the perch. Sergey almost laughed. Then he caught the first expulsion of breath, half choked and gasped, as he saw the parrot lunge forward swiftly, take the finger with a snapping motion in its beak, and bite downward.

More shocking than any scream was the silence of the prisoner. The parrot had bitten him to the bone. He behaved as though he had not felt it. Such a relief, this stab of pain, from the slow torture of suspense, so welcome the knowledge of his doom after its uncertainty, that the bird’s bite, though meaning death, was like a douche of cold water, reviving his manhood.

“Belogvardeyetz!” croaked the parrot, back on its perch with one strong wingbeat.

“He never makes a mistake,” exclaimed the Baba Papagai, and gabbled formally: “Citizen Nikitin, this court finds you guilty of counterrevolution. Take him out!” she shouted. “To the cellar with the White Guard servant of dogs!”

The prisoner was the calmest man in the church. Erect, his head back, with a firm step he allowed his guards to lead him across the front of the altar toward the rear entrance. As he passed the table of the Baba Papagai, she leaned forward and feasted her bulging eyes on his drawn white face. The prisoner looked her back squarely, sneering as though in sympathy with the snarl on her face, and with a contemptuous cry, “Parrot justice!” yielded to the urging of his guards as they dragged him through the door.

The Baba Papagai put on the cloth cap. Her upper lip clamped down in savage determination. “Tonight, at eleven o’clock, we’ll hear the next case on the docket.” She gathered up her papers, shoved the table aside, and strode down the aisle.

Sergey had intended to slip out before the others, but he had not reckoned with this abrupt ending of the session. Before he could move, the Baba Papagai was in the aisle, scrutinizing the faces as she passed. With every step she took, his courage waned. By the time she reached his bench, he was cowering in his seat. He felt numb in the clutch of a nightmare. Those eyes were the eyes of a Kelpie, that monster from the stories of Scotland his father had told him long ago, half-bull, half-demon, but shaped like a man, which dwelt at the bottom of the deep lochs of the Highlands and on nights when the full moon shone, appeared beside the skiffs of unwary boatmen and dragged them down to death. The Kelpie, he recollected shudderingly, had just such bulging eyes, such shaggy eyebrows, such lineaments of hate.

Never before had Sergey known such anguish as when the Baba Papagai stopped beside him, turned and surveyed the church to satisfy herself no one had moved since she left her table, then, quite accidentally let fall her gaze on his small red head.

“Well, who are you, with your head of an imp from hell?”

This repetition of the phrase so fresh in his memory broke the spell sufficiently for him to stammer out: “I’m only a little boy.”

“Whelp!” spat the Baba Papagai, and passed on through the door.

Running back to the prison as fast as he could, Sergey felt the movement of his legs in the sharp air send the blood tingling through his veins, and by the time he reached the house and paused to scrape the snow from his boots, he had shaken off his fears. He felt big with importance as he entered the hall and knew that he had news to tell. Marfoosha’s face brought back the unaccustomed sense of depression. She was sitting at the table between her father and the American soldier, her head sunk on her breast.

The two men looked up eagerly when Sergey appeared, but Marfoosha never stirred.

“Well, what happened?” cried the commandant.

“It bit, all right,” announced Sergey in a matter-of-fact tone.

The prison warden shoved his glass away from him, banged his fist on the table: “I knew it.”

Marfoosha lifted her head as if just awakened. Catching Sergey by the arm she drew him to her and whispered: “Tell us about it. All about it.”

Sergey began. They listened as though their lives depended upon every word.

“And then,” he went on, “she said she would hold court again tonight.”

“Tonight?” all three broke out. “Tonight? It was to be tomorrow.”

“You mean,” gasped Marfoosha, “that — that — he is to be tried tonight?”

“That’s what she said,” responded Sergey.

Marfoosha threw herself on the floor, clasping her lover round the knees. “They shan’t. They shan’t!” she screamed.

His face was white and his lip trembled a little as he patted her head, repeating tenderly: “Nichevo, nichevo, nichevo.” It was the only Russian word he could pronounce without a trace of accent, the universal “Never mind” or “What’s the use,” of Slavic fatalism.

But his caressing hand froze when the commandant mumbled thickly: “They shoot you through the back of the head.”

Marfoosha sobbed aloud.

“Yes, that’s how they do it,” insisted her father, tipsy with indignation. “They take you down to the cellar of the church and just as you pass the threshold they shoot you in the back of the head.”

A moan from his daughter checked him suddenly, diverting his anger. “And you! You damned imp!” he yelled at Sergey. “What are you going to do? I thought you could find something?”

Marfoosha’s weary “Let him alone” roused her father to a higher pitch.

“No, I won’t let him alone. What good has he done? You damned imp! It was Dedushka who swore you amounted to something. The old man is getting crazier every day. Suppose you get along over there and let him know how worthless you are. Get on. Get out of here.” Unable to vent his feelings otherwise, the commandant staggered to his feet and advanced with threatening fist toward the boy.

Sergey retreated sullenly. He was halfway down the steps when the commandant rushed out and yelled at him: “What time will it be?”

“Eleven o’clock tonight.”

It was already past five o’clock and pitch-dark. He found his way through the town by the glow from the windows and afterward by instinct, like a young wild animal, accurately retraced the path of the evening before. His thoughts were whirling about the awful eyes of the Baba Papagai. The longer he thought, the more convinced he became that she was a Kelpie. His father’s stories came back more vividly. Surely there was some detail he had forgotten. Yes, something about a charm or talisman against the monster. His father certainly had spoken of a charm. But that was all so long ago. To Sergey a whole lifetime seemed to have passed since then, and he groped back in his memory as an old man strives to recall his youth. He tried to concentrate his mind on the talisman, but each time it slipped away from him. “Like a watermelon seed slipping through your fingers,” thought Sergey.

The simile struck a vein of association. The talisman was some kind of seed. “Tree berries! The berries of the mountain ash! That’s what Father said was good for Kelpies. Woven in a cross.”

But something else too, when there were no ash berries. Something still better, he reflected. The feeling that the door was only halfway open persisted. He was walking head down, so absorbed in the effort to remember that he went past the old man’s boxcar without noticing it. Suddenly he stopped, sniffed the air like a hound on the trail, turned, saw the boxcar and ran toward it.

“I’ve found it!” shouted Sergey, leaping up and seizing the astonished old man by the hand. “I’ve found it!” he repeated, dancing in excitement. “We can save him now.”

“In the name of the Holy Saints Boris and Gleb!” ejaculated the grandfather. “What is it you’ve found to make you jump like a flea on a frog’s back?”

Sergey hardly heard him. His eyes were roving round the cabin.

“Ha! There, in the corner!” He heaved a deep sigh of relief. “The charm!” he exclaimed. “The charm, little grandfather, the charm to defeat the Kelpie.”

“And now perhaps you’ll tell me what a Kelpie is, and why you’re behaving like an idiot,” grunted the old man sarcastically as he dipped a bowl of stew and placed it smoking hot before the boy. How good it smelled! Sergey recollected his stomach so keenly that he forgot his excitement. Over the stew he related the day’s events, dwelling on his conviction that the Baba Papagai was a Kelpie.

“Very probable. Very probable.” The old man nodded affirmatively.

“Whew, I’m late, terribly late. Maybe he’s already gone.”

Sergey jumped for the door, pulling his fur cap over his ears, and with a shrill “Goodbye!” bolted into the night.

He took the steps at the prison door in one jump, landed on his heels, skidded and fell in a heap at the feet of the surprised sentry.

“Gangway! Lemme in.”

“Who, then, is holding you?” said the sentry as Sergey jerked open the door and rushed into the hall.

It was empty.

Sergey stopped, frozen with the fear that he had come too late to give his talisman to the American. His feet lagged as he crossed the hall, but voices in a room beyond quickened his step. He pushed his head cautiously through the door, entered quickly, closed it with a bang and jumped forward. Marfoosha and the American were sitting on the floor, talking so earnestly that they scarcely heeded Sergey’s presence.

Sergey brought his two hands down thwack on the backs of Marfoosha and her lover.

“Come! Quick! I’ve found it — the charm — to save you. Where’s the kitchen? Come with me.

“Quick! Here!” Sergey grabbed the American with his right hand and was digging in his pocket with the other when the Red Guard brusquely shoved him aside with: “Out of the way now, and enough of this monkey business. Can’t help it. Orders is orders. Come along.”

Marfoosha threw her arms around her lover’s neck. The Red Guard frowned with embarrassment but paused. Sergey turned his back as though in sympathy with the feelings of the lovers, but in the moment of their embrace he pulled from his pocket a little white object, and clenching it tightly in his fist whirled and cried:

“Well, comrade, shake hands. Come on, be a man — don’t stand there like a dummy.”

The American looked down at him, smiled, released Marfoosha and took Sergey’s small paw.

“Goodbye,” he said.

“A talisman. Keep it in your hand until the last minute,” whispered Sergey. “It’s magic. Hold it tight, dig your nails into it, and you can’t lose.” Then aloud: “Goodbye, comrade.”

The Baba Papagai believed in ceremony of a kind.

As eleven boomed from the tower, the Baba Papagai’s huge bulk moved down the aisle towards the altar. Behind her two soldiers, each carrying a lighted candle a yard long and thick as a man’s arm. Behind them a third, holding aloft the golden banner, with the parrot’s cage, wrapped in a white napkin, swinging beneath it like a censer. Then the clerk of the court with measured step. Then two guards with fixed bayonets. Then the prisoner, head high, shoulders squared, marching slow as a funeral parade. Finally, two more guards.

The Baba Papagai strode to the table before the altar, turned, surveyed the audience, seated herself and folded her arms. The man with the ecclesiastical banner placed it neatly in its socket, and with a nervous gesture flicked off the cover from the cage. The light of the two candles fell on the parrot. It blinked, ruffled its feathers, stretched its neck and croaked: “Gotova!” (“Ready”)

The Baba Papagai bared her yellow fangs.

“Gotova! Yes, we are ready, my little dove! Comrades,” said the Baba Papagai, pushing back her chair, crossing her legs and shoving her cap to the back of her head. “Comrades, we are here tonight to try a foreign dog who was sent to impose the might of his capitalist masters upon the workers and peasants of the. Russian Socialist Federation of Soviet Republics. He comes from the country which above all would like to see the first Workers and Peasants Govern-men® once more enslaved by tyrants. An American! It means a dog.”

The word “dog” aroused the parrot. It squawked: “Belogvardeyetz!”

The woman’s maniac laughter shocked the echoes of the church.

“Never wrong! Never wrong! My little dove never mistakes them,” she cried. “Now, you dog of a White Guard, speak now for yourself. Say why you, a foreigner, dared invade our country.”

The American answered boldly in his childish Russian:

“Yah gavaryou ochen malo po Russky. No yah ne vinovat.”

“Oh, you speak very little Russian but you’re not guilty. You know enough to say that. And you’ve nothing more to say?” The Baba Papagai rose to her feet, placed her cap before her on the table and leaned forward. “Nothing more? Or have you some excuse?”

“Nichevo,” retorted the prisoner coolly. It was the one word he pronounced perfectly in Russian.

Her face darkened with fury. “Dog!” The word penetrated to the farthest corners of the building.

Immediately the parrot responded: Belogvardeyetz!"

“The little comrade has spoken. Let him judge the case.”

The two guards beside the American grasped him by the arms. He needed no urging. “Nichevo,” he said again, to tell them he was not afraid to play his part without coercion.

He walked straight up to the cage. Sergey held his breath. The boy’s glance shifted rapidly from the parrot’s cage to the Baba Papagai, still leaning forward on the table, her Kelpie’s eyes a-goggle at her victim.

“Hell!” said the American aloud. The foreign word rang out defiantly. “Hell!” he repeated again, and stuck his forefinger into the cage.

The parrot lifted its wings. Every spectator — save perhaps one, for Sergey’s Scotch heart beat stoutly in his breast — knew that it would strike. It lifted its wings, squawked, teetered on its perch, lowered its beak close to the proffered finger, then half flew, half hopped across the cage, beating the air, screeching atrociously: “Konchala! Konchala!” (“Finished! Finished!”)

“Well? What do you say to that, old girl?” asked the American in English, grinning at the Baba Papagai.

Her eyes were glazed. She crashed her fist upon the table.

“Dog! Dog!” she reared.

“Belogvardeyetz! Belogvardeyetz!” weakly echoed the parrot.

“Once more, you dog!” commanded the Baba Papagai.

“As often as you like,” answered the American, and put his finger again through the bars.

This time the parrot never pretended to investigate. It cowered at the bottom of the cage, buried its beak in its breast feathers, and only when the Baba Papagai shrieked “Dog!” at the top of her voice did it respond with a low croak: “Belogvardeyetz!”

“What’s the hour?” The Baba Papagai turned to the clerk beside her. Trembling, he pulled from beneath his sheepskin coat a massive gold repeater, said, “Fifteen minutes to midnight.” and returned the former property of the Prince Rashkushin to his pocket.

“Release the prisoner. He is acquitted.” The parrot woman kicked aside her table and strode down the aisle. For the sake of this one victim she could not disavow her favorite instrument of terror.

This time Sergey Sergeyitch McTavish sat up straight in his seat and stared at her as she passed him. The moment she disappeared, he ran forward and grasped the American by the hand.

“A Kelpie! I told you! A Kelpie!” he yelled crazily. “My father was right — my father knew.”

Indifferent to the buzz of congratulations and the eager hands outstretched to them, the young soldier swung Sergey aloft.

“You’re all right, kid,” he shouted in English. “You may be cuckoo, but you’re there with the goods.” Then in Russian: “What was it, malchik! I kept it in my hand until the last, but afterward I dropped it. How did you do it?”

His mouth close to the other’s ear, Sergey murmured: “Take a sniff at your finger.”

The American gave a loud yell, then checked himself.

“Yes,” whispered Sergey, “garlic — that’s the charm against Kelpies.” The two set off at a trot for the home of Marfoosha.