Mohammed Bek Hadjetlache

THIS Mohammedan colonel from the Caucasus yells with his voice and wigwags with his arms. The interpreter translates, 'I was a friend of Kornilov, he asks me what to do and I tell him.' A stub of a man, this Mohammedan colonel ... a projectile shape ... a bald head hammered ... 'Does he fight or do they put him in a cannon and shoot him at the enemy?' This fly-by-night, this bull-roarer who knows everybody. 'I write forty books, history of Islam, history of Europe, true religion, scientific farming, I am the Roosevelt of the Caucasus, I go to America and ride horses in the moving pictures for $500,000, you get $50,000 ...' 'I have 30,000 acres in the Caucasus, I have a stove factory in Petrograd the bolsheviks take from me, I am an old friend of the Czar, I am an old family friend of Clemenceau ...' These hands strangled three fellow workers for the czarist restoration, took their money, sent them in sacks to a river bottom ... and scandalized Stockholm with his gang of strangler women. Mid-sea strangler hands rise before me illustrating a wish, 'I ride horses for the moving pictures in America, $500,000, and you get ten per cent ...' This rider of fugitive dawns.