ENJAMIN TEAK, sometime a chief officer in the United States mercantile marine, had long ago lost his ticket for gross malpractices. New York has sent some tough men to sea, and Teak lived fully up to his name and the reputation of his class.
He had been a capable seaman and would have made an excellent pirate. This career being closed to him, he had proceeded to make the best of things ashore, and had engaged in a number of enterprises demanding strength and physical courage, together with complete unscrupulousness, not without a certain measure of success. He was a man who never remained very long in one place. In him, the wanderlust was strong.
So, sometimes affluent, sometimes needy, but always open to any job which promised a speedy return, he had drifted one fine day into the city of Moscow.
The condition of Russia at the time was not attractive from an ordinary traveller's point of view. Tourist agents were not including Moscow in any of their itineraries. But to Teak and others of his class Russia was a magnet. Dangers did not appal him-he had survived many; but amid social disorders, as he had learned in South America, there is always a prospect of loot.
The adventure, nevertheless, had proved unprofitable up to the time that Fate introduced him to Doctor Weissler and Herr Krauss.
Returning late one night from a café to his lodgings, Teak, crossing the end of a narrow by-way, beheld a fight for life taking place in the sanctified shadows of an ancient monastery.
Such spectacles were not unusual in Moscow at the time, nor were they unfamiliar throughout the memories of Teak's life. But this particular conflict had unique features.
Of the pair engaged in it one—an elderly man endowed with a profusion of white hair—was dressed as well as it was discreet to dress in Moscow under existing conditions, whilst the other, a hirsute, black-bearded creature with incredibly long arms, seemed to belong to the artisan class.
Teak, unnoticed by the combatants, paused a few steps from the corner, watching the fight. The bearded fighter clearly possessed abnormal strength; so much so, that by degrees he was overcoming the other, a powerfully built man, and for all his advancing years, no mean adversary. Save for a panting like that of animals in conflict, with, sometimes, a sibilant breath visible like smoke in the ice-cold air, they fought silently, the hairy man point by point gaining the advantage. Teak scratched his chin reflectively.
Interference might result in arrest; these were queer times. On the other hand, it might result in profit. Thus far, he had drawn blank in Moscow. He was a man of quick decision and he decided to gamble.
In ten seconds he was on the spot. The long-armed, bearded man, who on closer inspection proved to be even more hideous than he had supposed, had now secured a stranglehold upon his opponent and was slowly crushing life from the latter.
Teak bent forward, clasping his big hands around the hairy throat of the victor. A gurgling cry—a gasp—and the strangling fingers relaxed. Teak threw the fellow on his back and stood waiting for what was to come.
The older man, lying with his head almost touching the wall of the monastery, began to inhale painful, sobbing breaths; and Teak, staring down at him, made a remarkable discovery. The snowy locks were false—a wig! It had become disarranged; and beneath it appeared the stranger's own virile, close-curling red hair!
Teak whistled softly—then side-stepped, ducked, and encountered one of the big thrills of his life.
Before his experienced calculations had allowed as possible, the other, hideous ape-like abortion, was on his feet again, had cunningly dodged a lead-off with the left calculated to fell an Argentine mule, and had closed.
Teak, to his consternation, found himself engaged in a life-or-death struggle with a creature apparently possessed of the strength of an orang-outang! He could have given his opponent the better part of three stone, yet when at last he conquered, and the man lay groaning at his feet, he realized that he was dangerously near the end of his own resources.
This proved to be a turning point in Teak's career. That very night he was introduced to Doctor Weissler's establishment in Moscow and offered immediate employment on the staff of this singular scientist. The Doctor, fully aware that his rescuer had detected the disguise, offered an explanation, characterized by reticence, which represented him to be an enemy of the Soviet Government. Teak kept his own counsel. The exact nature of his duties was far from clear. That he was to act as bodyguard for his employer he speedily learned.