tranger do before he takes up his abode?"

"First find an abode," said the general with a meaning smile. "You asked
me to drive you to the Hotel Bazar Slav, my simple but misguided friend!
That is a Soviet headquarters. You will certainly go to a place adjacent
to the hotel to register yourself, and afterwards to the Commissary to
register all over again, and, if you are regarded with approval, which
is hardly likely, you will be given a ticket which will enable you to
secure the necessities of life--the tickets are easier to get than the
food."

The first call at the house near the Bazar Slav gave them neither
trouble nor results. The Soviet headquarters was mainly concerned with
purely administrative affairs, and the organization of its membership.
Its corridors and doorway were crowded with soldiers wearing the
familiar red armlet, and when Malinkoff secured an interview with a
weary looking and unkempt official, who sat collarless in his shirt
sleeves at a table covered with papers, that gentleman could do no more
than lean back in his chair and curse the interrupters volubly.

"We might have dispensed with the headquarters visit," said Malinkoff,
"but it is absolutely necessary that you should see the Commissary
unless you want to be pulled out of your bed one night and shot before
you're thoroughly awake. By the way, we have an interesting American in
gaol--by his description I gather he is what you would call a gun-man."

Malcolm stared.

"Here--a gun-man?"

Malinkoff nodded.

"He held up the Treasurer-General of the Soviet and relieved him of his
wealth. I would like to have met him--but I presume he is dead. Justice
is swift in Moscow, especially for those who hold up the officials of
the Revolution."

"What sort of justice do these people administer?" asked Malcolm
curiously.

Malinkoff shrugged his padded shoulders.

"Sometimes I think that the very habit of justice is dead in this land,"
he said. "On the whole they are about as just and fair as was the old
regime--that is not saying much, is it? The cruelty of our rule to-day
is due rather to ignorance than to ill will. A few of the men higher up
are working off their old grievances and are profiting enormously, but
the rank and file of the movement are labouring for the millennium."

"I think they're mad," said Malcolm.

"All injustice is mad," replied Malinkoff philosophically. "Now get into
my little cab, and I will drive you to the Commiss