Red Dusk and the Morrow: Adventures and Investigations in Red Russia

by Paul Dukes

CERTIFICATE

This is to certify that Joseph Afirenko is in the service of the Extraordinary Commissar of the Central Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Red Armymen’s Deputies in the capacity of office clerk, as the accompanying signatures and seal attest.

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“In the service of the Extraordinary Commission?” I gasped, taken aback by the amazing audacity of the thing.

“Why not?” said the cadaverous man coolly, “what could be safer?”

What, indeed? What could be safer than to purport to be in the service of the institution whose duty it was to hound down all, old or young, rich or poor, educated or illiterate—who ventured to oppose and sought to expose the pseudo-proletarian Bolshevist administration? Nothing, of course, could be safer! S volkami zhitj, po voltchi vitj, as the Russians say. “If you must live amongst wolves, then howl, too, as the wolves do!”

“Now for the signatures and seal,” said the Finn. “Tihonov and Friedmann used to sign these papers, though it don’t matter much, it’s only the seal that counts.” From some Soviet papers on the table he selected one with two signatures from which to copy. Choosing a suitable pen he scrawled beneath the text of my passport in an almost illegible slanting hand, “Tihonov.” This was the signature of a proxy of the Extraordinary Commissar. The paper must also be signed by a secretary, or his proxy. “Sign for your own secretary,” said the Finn, laughing and pushing the paper to me. “Write upright this time, like this. Here is the original. ‘Friedmann’ is the name.” Glancing at the original I made an irregular scrawl, resembling in some way the signature of the Bolshevist official.

“Have you a photograph?” asked the cadaverous man. I gave him a photograph I had had taken at Viborg. Cutting it down small he stuck it at the side of the paper. Then, taking a round rubber seal, he made two imprints over the photograph. The seal was a red one, with the same inscription inside the periphery as was at the head of the paper. The inner space of the seal consisted of the five-pointed Bolshevist star with a mallet and a plough in the centre.

“That is your certificate of service,” said the Finn; “we will give you a second one of personal identification.” Another paper was quickly printed off with the words, “The holder of this is the Soviet employee, Joseph Ilitch Afirenko, aged 36 years.” This paper was unnecessary in itself, but two “documents” were always better than one.

It was now after midnight and the leader of the Finnish patrol ordered us to lie down for a short rest. He threw himself on a couch in the eating-room. There were only two beds for the remaining four of us and I lay down on one of them with one of the Finns. I tried to sleep but couldn’t. I thought of all sorts of things—of Russia in the past, of the life of adventure I had elected to lead for the present, of the morrow, of friends still in Petrograd who must not know of my return—if I got there. I was nervous, but the dejection that had overcome me in the train was gone. I saw the essential humour of my situation. The whole adventure was really one big exclamation mark! Forsan et haec olim....

The two hours of repose seemed interminable. I was afraid of three o’clock and yet I wanted it to come quicker, to get it over. At last a shuffling noise approached from the neighbouring room and the cadaverous Finn prodded each of us with the butt of his rifle. “Wake up,” he whispered, “we’ll leave in a quarter of an hour. No noise. The people in the next cottage mustn’t hear us.”

We were ready in a few minutes. My entire baggage was a small parcel that went into my pocket, containing a pair of socks, one or two handkerchiefs, and some dry biscuits. In another pocket I had the medicine bottle of whisky I had hidden from Melnikoff and some bread, while I hid my money inside my shirt. One of the four Finns remained behind. The other three were to accompany me to the river. It was a raw and frosty November night, and pitch dark. Nature was still as death. We issued silently from the house, the cadaverous man leading. One of the men followed up behind, and all carried their rifles ready for use.

We walked stealthily along the road the Finn had pointed out to me on paper overnight, bending low where no trees sheltered us from the Russian bank. A few yards below on the right I heard the murmur of the river stream. We soon arrived at a ramshackle villa standing on the river surrounded by trees and thickets. Here we stood stock-still for a moment to listen for any unexpected sounds. The silence was absolute. But for the noise of the water there was not a sound.

We descended to the water under cover of the tumble-down villa and the bushes. The stream was about twenty paces wide at this point. Along both banks there was an edging of ice. I looked across at the opposite side. It was open meadow, but the trees loomed darkly a hundred paces away on either hand in the background. On the left I could just see the cottage of the Red patrol against which the Finns had warned me.

The cadaverous man took up his station at a slight break in the thickets. A moment later he returned and announced that all was well. “Remember,” he enjoined me once more in an undertone, “run slightly to the left, but—keep an eye on that cottage.” He made a sign to the other two and from the bushes they dragged out a boat. Working noiselessly they attached a long rope to the stern and laid a pole in it. Then they slid it down the bank into the water.

“Get into the boat,” whispered the leader, “and push yourself across with the pole. And good luck!”

I shook hands with my companions, pulled at my little bottle of whisky, and got into the boat. I started pushing, but with the rope trailing behind it was no easy task to punt the little bark straight across the running stream. I was sure I should be heard, and had amidstream the sort of feeling I should imagine a man has as he walks his last walk to the gallows. At length I was at the farther side, but it was impossible to hold the boat steady while I landed. In jumping ashore I crashed through the thin layer of ice. I scrambled out and up the bank. And the boat was hastily pulled back to Finland behind me.

“Run hard!” I heard a low call from over the water.

Damn it, the noise of my splash had reached the Red patrol! I was already running hard when I saw a light emerge from the cottage on the left. I forgot the injunctions as to direction and simply bolted away from that lantern. Halfway across the sloping meadow I dropped and lay still. The light moved rapidly along the river bank. There was shouting, and then suddenly shots, but there was no reply from the Finnish side. Then the light began to move slowly back towards the cottage of the Red patrol, and finally all was silent again.

I lay motionless for some time, then rose and proceeded cautiously. Having missed the right direction I found I had to negotiate another small stream that ran obliquely down the slope of the meadow. Being already wet I did not suffer by wading through it. Then I reached some garden fences over which I climbed and found myself in the road.

Convincing myself that the road was deserted, I crossed it and came out on to the moors where I found a half-built house. Here I sat down to await the dawn—blessing the man who invented whisky, for I was very cold. It began to snow, and half-frozen I got up to walk about and study the locality as well as I could in the dark. At the cross-roads near the station I discovered some soldiers sitting round a bivouac fire, so I retreated quickly to my half-built house and waited till it was light. Then I approached the station with other passengers. At the gate a soldier was examining passports. I was not a little nervous when showing mine for the first time, but the examination was a very cursory one. The soldier seemed only to be assuring himself the paper had a proper seal. He passed me through and I went to the ticket office and demanded a ticket.

“One first class to Petrograd,” I said, boldly.

“There is no first class by this train, only second and third.”

“No first? Then give me a second.” I had asked the Finns what class I ought to travel, expecting them to say, third. But they replied, “First, of course,” for it would be strange to see an employee of the Extraordinary Commission travelling other than first class. Third class was for workers and peasants.

The journey to Petrograd was about twenty-five miles, and stopping at every station the train took nearly two hours. As we approached the city the coaches filled up until people were standing in the aisles and on the platforms. There was a crush on the Finland Station at which we arrived. The examination of papers was again merely cursory. I pushed out with the throng, and looking around me on the dirty, rubbish-strewn station I felt a curious mixture of relief and apprehension. A flood of strange thoughts and recollections rushed through my mind. I saw my whole life in a new and hitherto undreamt-of perspective. Days of wandering Europe, student days in Russia, life amongst the Russian peasantry, and three years of apparently aimless war work all at once assumed symmetrical proportions and appeared like the sides of a prism leading to a common apex at which I stood. Yes, my life, I suddenly realized, had had an aim—it was to stand here on the threshold of the city that was my home, homeless, helpless, and friendless, one of the common crowd. That was it—one of the common crowd! I wanted not the theories of theorists, nor the doctrines of doctrinaires, but to see what the greatest social experiment the world has ever witnessed did for the common crowd. And, strangely buoyant, I stepped lightly out of the station into the familiar streets.

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CHAPTER II
FIVE DAYS

One of the first things that caught my eye as I emerged from the station was an old man, standing with his face to the wall of a house, leaning against a protruding gutter-pipe. As I passed him I noticed he was sobbing. I stopped to speak to him.

“What is the matter, little uncle?” I said.

“I am cold and hungry,” he whimpered without looking up and still leaning against the pipe. “For three days I have eaten nothing.” I pushed a twenty-rouble note into his hand. “Here, take this,” I said.

He took the money but looked at me, puzzled. “Thank you,” he mumbled, “but what is the good of money? Where shall I get bread?” So I gave him a piece of mine and passed on.

There was plenty of life and movement in the streets, though only of foot-passengers. The roadway was dirty and strewn with litter. Strung across the street from house to house were the shreds of washed-out red flags, with inscriptions that showed they had been hung out a few weeks earlier to celebrate the anniversary of the Bolshevist coup d’état. Occasionally one came across small groups of people, evidently of the educated class, ladies and elderly gentlemen in worn-out clothes, shovelling away the early snow and slush under the supervision of a workman, who as taskmaster stood still and did nothing.

The Fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul

Crossing the Liteiny Bridge on my way into the city I stopped, as was my wont, to contemplate the marvellous view of the river Neva. No capital in Europe possesses so beautiful an expanse of water as this city of Peter the Great. Away on the horizon the slender gilded spire of the cathedral of St. Peter and St. Paul rose from the gloomy fortress. By force of habit I wondered who was now incarcerated in those dark dungeons. Years ago, before the revolution, I used to stand and look at the “Petropavlovka,” as the fortress is popularly called, thinking of those who pined in its subterranean cells for seeking the liberty of the Russian people.

My first destination was the house of an English gentleman, to whom I shall refer as Mr. Marsh. Marsh was a prominent business man in Petrograd. I did not know him personally, but he had been a friend of Captain Crombie and until recently was known to be at liberty. He lived on the quay of the Fontanka, a long, straggling branch of the Neva flowing through the heart of the city. Melnikoff knew Marsh and had promised to prepare him for my coming. I found the house and, after assuring myself the street was clear and I was not observed, I entered. In the hall I was confronted by an individual, who might or might not have been the house-porter—I could not tell. But I saw at once that this man was not disposed to be friendly. He let me in, closed the door behind me, and promptly placed himself in front of it.

“Whom do you want?” he asked.

“I want Mr. Marsh,” I said. “Can you tell me the number of his flat?” I knew the number perfectly well, but I could see from the man’s manner that the less I knew about Marsh, the better for me.

“Marsh is in prison,” replied the man, “and his flat is sealed up. Do you know him?”

Devil take it, I thought, I suppose I shall be arrested too, to see what I came here for! The idea occurred to me for a moment to flaunt my concocted passport in his face and make myself out to be an agent of the Extraordinary Commission, but as such I should have known of Marsh’s arrest, and I should still have to explain the reason of my visit. It wouldn’t do. I thought rapidly for a plausible pretext.

“No, I don’t know him,” I replied. “I have never seen him in my life. I was sent to give him this little parcel.” I held up the packet containing my trousseau of socks, biscuits, and handkerchiefs. “He left this in a house at Alexandrovsky the other night. I am an office clerk there. I will take it back.”

The man eyed me closely. “You do not know Mr. Marsh?” he said again, slowly.

“I have never seen him in my life,” I repeated, emphatically, edging nearer the door.

“You had better leave the parcel, however,” he said.

“Yes, yes, certainly,” I agreed with alacrity, fearful at the same time lest my relief at this conclusion to the incident should be too noticeable.

I handed him over my parcel. “Good-morning,” I said civilly, “I will say that Mr. Marsh is arrested.” The man moved away from the door, still looking hard at me as I passed out into the street.

Agitated by this misfortune, I turned my steps in the direction of the hospital where I hoped to find Melnikoff. The hospital in question was at the extreme end of the Kamenostrovsky Prospect, in the part of the city known as The Islands because it forms the delta of the river Neva. It was a good four-mile walk from Marsh’s house. I tried to get on to a street-car, but there were very few running and they were so crowded that it was impossible to board them. People hung in bunches all round the steps and even on the buffers. So, tired as I was after the night’s adventure, I footed it.

Melnikoff, it appeared, was a relative of one of the doctors of this hospital, but I did not find him here. The old woman at the lodge said he had been there one night and had not returned since. I began to think something untoward must have occurred, although doubtless he had several other night-shelters besides this one. There was nothing to do but wait for the afternoon and go to the clandestine café to which he had directed me.

I retraced my steps slowly into town. All around was shabbiness. Here and there in the roadway lay a dead horse. The wretched brutes were whipped to get the last spark of life and labour out of them and then lay where they fell, for the ladies who were made to sweep the streets were not strong enough to remove dead horses. Every street, every building, shop, and porch spoke to me of bygone associations, which with a pang I now realized were dead. A few stores remained open, notably for music, books, and flowers, but Soviet licences were required to purchase anything except propagandist literature, which was sold freely at a cheap price, and flowers, which were fabulously dear. Hawkers with trucks disposed of second-hand books, obviously removed from the shelves of private libraries, while a tiny basement store, here and there peeping shamefacedly up from beneath the level of the street, secreted in semi-obscurity an unappetizing display of rotting vegetables or fruits and the remnants of biscuits and canned goods. But everything spoke bitterly of the progressive dearth of things and the increasing stagnation of normal life.

I stopped to read the multifarious public notices and announcements on the walls. Some bore reference to Red army mobilization, others to compulsory labour for the bourgeoisie, but most of them dealt with the distribution of food. I bought some seedy-looking apples, and biscuits that tasted several years old. I also bought all the newspapers and a number of pamphlets by Lenin, Zinoviev, and others. Finding a cab with its horse still on four legs, I hired it and drove to the Finland Station, where upon arrival in the morning I had noticed there was a buffet. The food exhibited on the counter, mostly bits of herring on microscopic pieces of black bread, were still less appetizing than my biscuits, so I just sat down to rest, drank a weak liquid made of tea-substitute, and read the Soviet papers.

There was not much of news, for the ruling Bolshevist[1] class had already secured a monopoly of the Press by closing down all journals expressing opinions antagonistic to them, so that all that was printed was propaganda. While the Press of the Western world was full of talk of peace, the Soviet journals were insisting on the creation of a mighty Red army that should set Europe and the globe aflame with world-revolution.

At three o’clock I set out to look for Melnikoff’s café, a clandestine establishment in a private flat on the top floor of a house in one of the streets off the Nevsky Prospect. When I rang the bell the door was opened just a wee bit and I espied a keen and suspicious eye through the chink. Seeing it was immediately about to close again I slid one foot into the aperture and asked quickly for Melnikoff.

“Melnikoff?” said the voice accompanying the eagle eye. “What Melnikoff?”

“N——,” I said, giving Melnikoff’s real name. At this point the door was opened a little wider and I was confronted by two ladies, the one (with the eagle eye) elderly and plump, the other young and good-looking.

“What is his first name and patronymic?” asked the younger lady. “Nicolas Nicolaevitch,” I replied. “It is all right,” said the younger lady to the elder. “He said someone might be coming to meet him this afternoon. Come in,” she went on, to me. “Nicolas Nicolaevitch was here for a moment on Saturday and said he would be here yesterday but did not come. I expect him any minute now.”

I passed into a sitting-room fitted with small tables, where the fair young lady, Vera Alexandrovna, served me to my surprise with delicious little cakes which would have graced any Western tea-table. The room was empty when I arrived, but later about a dozen people came in, all of distinctly bourgeois stamp, some prepossessing in appearance, others less so. A few of the young men looked like ex-officers of dubious type. They laughed loudly, talked in raucous voices, and seemed to have plenty of money to spend, for the delicacies were extremely expensive. This café, I learned later, was a meeting-place for conspirators, who were said to have received funds for counter-revolutionary purposes from representatives of the allies.

Vera Alexandrovna came over to the table in the corner where I sat alone. “I must apologize,” she said, placing a cup on the table, “for not giving you chocolate. I ran out of chocolate last week. This is the best I can do for you. It is a mixture of cocoa and coffee—an invention of my own in these hard times.” I tasted it and found it very nice.

Vera Alexandrovna was a charming girl of about twenty summers, and with my uncouth get-up and general aspect I felt I was a bad misfit in her company. I was painfully conscious of attracting attention and apologized for my appearance.

“Don’t excuse yourself,” replied Vera Alexandrovna, “we all look shabby nowadays.” (She herself, however, was very trim.) “Nicolas Nicolaevitch told me you were coming and that you were a friend of his—but I shall ask no questions. You may feel yourself quite safe and at home here and nobody will notice you.” (But I saw four of the loud-voiced young officers at the next table looking at me very hard.)

“I scarcely expected to find these comforts in hungry Petrograd,” I said to Vera Alexandrovna. “May I ask how you manage to keep your café going?”

“Oh, it is becoming very difficult indeed,” complained Vera Alexandrovna. “We have two servants whom we send twice a week into the villages to bring back flour and milk, and we buy sugar from the Jews in the Jewish market. But it is getting so hard. We do not know if we shall be able to keep it going much longer. Then, too, we may be discovered. Twice the Reds have been to ask if suspicious people live in this house, but the porter put them off because we give him flour.”

Vera Alexandrovna rose to attend to other guests. I felt extremely ill at ease, for it was clear I was attracting attention and I did not at all like the looks of some of the people present.

“Ah, ma chère Vera Alexandrovna!” exclaimed a fat gentleman in spectacles who had just come in, kissing her hand effusively. “Here we are again! Well, our Redskins haven’t long to last now, I’ll be bound. The latest is that they are going to mobilize. Mobilize, indeed! Just a little push from outside, and pouf! up they’ll go like a bubble bursting!”

At once one of the four young men rose from the next table and approached me. He was tall and thin, with sunken eyes, hair brushed straight up, and a black moustache. There was a curious crooked twitch about his mouth.

“Good-afternoon,” he said. “Allow me to introduce myself. Captain Zorinsky. You are waiting for Melnikoff, are you not? I am a friend of his.”

I shook hands with Zorinsky, but gave him no encouragement to talk. Why had Melnikoff not told me I should meet this “friend of his”? Had this Zorinsky merely guessed I was waiting for Melnikoff, or had Vera Alexandrovna told him—Vera Alexandrovna, who assured me no one would notice me?

“Melnikoff did not come here yesterday,” Zorinsky continued, “but if I can do anything for you at any time I shall be glad.”

I bowed and he returned to his table. Since it was already six I resolved I would stay in this café no longer. The atmosphere of the place filled me with indefinable apprehension.

“I am so sorry you have missed Nicolas Nicolaevitch,” said Vera Alexandrovna as I took my leave. “Will you come in to-morrow?” I said I would, fully determined that I would not. “Come back at any time,” said Vera Alexandrovna, with her pleasant smile; “and remember,” she added, reassuringly, in an undertone, “here you are perfectly safe.”

Could anybody be more charming than Vera Alexandrovna? Birth, education, and refinement were manifested in every gesture. But as for her café, I had an ominous presentiment about it, and nothing would have induced me to re-enter it.

I resolved to resort to the flat of Ivan Sergeievitch, Melnikoff’s friend who had seen me off at Viborg. The streets were bathed in gloom as I emerged from the café. Lamps burned only at rare intervals. And suppose, I speculated, I find no one at Ivan Sergeievitch’s home? What would offer a night’s shelter—a porch, here or there, a garden, a shed? Perhaps one of the cathedrals, Kazan, for instance, might be open. Ah, look, there was a hoarding round one side of the Kazan Cathedral! I stepped up and peeped inside. Lumber and rubbish. Yes, I decided, that would do splendidly!

Ivan Sergeievitch’s house was in a small street at the end of Kazanskaya, and like Vera Alexandrovna’s his flat was on the top floor. My experience of the morning had made me very cautious, and I was careful to enter the house as though I were making a mistake, the easier to effect an escape if necessary. But the house was as still as death. I met nobody on the stairs, and for a long time there was no reply to my ring. I was just beginning to think seriously of the hoarding round the Kazan Cathedral when I heard footsteps, and a female voice said querulously behind the door, “Who is there?”

“From Ivan Sergeievitch,” I replied, speaking just loud enough to be heard through the door.

There was a pause. “From which Ivan Sergeievitch?” queried the voice.

I lowered my tone. I felt the other person was listening intently. “From your Ivan Sergeievitch, in Viborg,” I said in a low voice at the keyhole.

There was another pause. “But who are you?” came the query.

“Do not be alarmed,” I said in the same tone. “I have a message to you from him.”

The footsteps receded. I could hear voices conferring. Then two locks were undone, and the door was partially opened on a short chain. I saw a middle-aged woman peering at me with fear and suspicion through the chink.

I repeated what I had already said, adding in a whisper that I myself had just come from Finland and would perhaps be going back shortly. The chain was then removed and I passed in.

The woman who opened the door, and who proved to be the housekeeper spoken of by Ivan Sergeievitch, closed it again hastily, locked it securely, and stood before me, a trembling little figure with keen eyes that looked me up and down with uncertainty. A few paces away stood a girl, the nurse of Ivan Sergeievitch’s children, who were in Finland.

“Ivan Sergeievitch is an old friend of mine,” I said, not truthfully, but very anxious to calm the suspicions of my humble hostesses. “I knew him long ago and saw him again quite recently in Finland. He asked me, if I found it possible, to come round and see you.”

“Come in, come in, please,” said the housekeeper, whom I shall call Stepanovna, still very nervously. “Excuse our showing you into the kitchen, but it is the only room we have warmed. It is so difficult to get firewood nowadays.”

I sat down in the kitchen, feeling very tired. “Ivan Sergeievitch is well and sends his greetings,” I said. “So are his wife and the children. They hope you are well and not suffering. They would like you to join them but it is impossible to get passports.”

“Thank you, thank you,” said Stepanovna. “I am glad they are well. We have not heard from them for so long. May we offer you something to eat——?”

“Ivan Pavlovitch is my name,” I interpolated, catching her hesitation.

“May we offer you something to eat, Ivan Pavlovitch?” said Stepanovna kindly, busying herself at the stove. Her hands still trembled. “Thank you,” I said, “but I am afraid you have not much yourself.”

“We are going to have some soup for supper,” she replied. “There will be enough for you, too.”

Stepanovna left the kitchen for a moment, and the nursing maid, whose name was Varia, leaned over to me and said in a low voice, “Stepanovna is frightened to-day. She nearly got arrested this morning at the market when the Reds came and took people buying and selling food.”

I saw from Varia’s manner that she was a self-possessed and intelligent girl and I resolved to speak to her first regarding my staying the night, lest I terrified Stepanovna by the suggestion.

“When I went to my home this afternoon,” I said, “I found it locked. I expect the housekeeper was out. It is very far, and I wonder if I may stay the night here. A sofa will do to lie on, or even the floor. I am dreadfully tired and my leg is aching from an old wound. Ivan Sergeievitch said I might use his flat whenever I liked.”

“I will ask Stepanovna,” said Varia. “I do not think she will mind.” Varia left the room and, returning, said Stepanovna agreed—for one night.

The soup was soon ready. It was cabbage soup, and very good. I ate two big platefuls of it, though conscience pricked me in accepting a second. But I was very hungry. During supper a man in soldier’s uniform came in by the kitchen door and sat down on a box against the wall. He said nothing at all, but he had a good-natured, round, plump face, with rosy cheeks and twinkling eyes. With a jack-knife he hewed square chunks off a loaf of black bread, one of which chunks was handed to me.

“This is my nephew Dmitri,” said Stepanovna. “He has just become a volunteer so as to get Red army rations, so we are better off now.”

Dmitri smiled at being mentioned, but said nothing. After two platefuls of soup I could scarcely keep my eyes open. So I asked where I might spend the night and was shown into the study, where I threw myself on the couch and fell fast asleep.

When I awoke I had such a strange sensation of unaccustomed surroundings that I was completely bewildered, and was only brought to my senses by Varia entering with a glass of tea—real tea, from Dmitri’s Red rations.

Then I recalled the previous day, my adventurous passage across the frontier, the search for Marsh and Melnikoff, the secret café, and my meeting with my present humble friends. With disconcerting brusqueness I also recollected that I had as yet no prospects for the ensuing night. But I persuaded myself that much might happen before nightfall and tried to think no more about it.

Stepanovna had quite got over her fright, and when I came into the kitchen to wash and drink another glass of tea she greeted me kindly. Dmitri sat on his box in stolid silence, munching a crust of bread.

“Been in the Red army long?” I asked him, by way of conversation.

“Three weeks,” he replied.

“Well, and do you like it?”

Dmitri pouted and shrugged his shoulders disparagingly.

“Do you have to do much service?” I persisted.

“Done none yet.”

“No drill?”

“None.”

“No marching?”

“None.”

Sounds easy, I thought. “What do you do?”

“I draw rations.”

“So I see,” I observed.

Conversation flagged. Dmitri helped himself to more tea and Stepanovna questioned me further as to how Ivan Sergeievitch was doing.

“What were you in the old army?” I continued at the first opportunity to Dmitri.

“An orderly.”

“What are you now?”

“A driver.”

“Who are your officers?”

“We have a commissar.” A commissar in the army is a Bolshevist official attached to a regiment to supervise the actions of the officer staff.

“Who is he?”

“Who knows?” replied Dmitri. “He is one like the rest,” he added, as if all commissars were of an inferior race.

“What is the Red army?” I asked, finally.

“Who knows?” replied Dmitri, as if it were the last thing in the world to interest any one.

Dmitri was typical of the mass of the unthinking proletariat at this time, regarding the Bolshevist Government as an accidental, inexplicable, and merely temporary phenomenon which was destined at an early date to decay and disappear. As for the thinking proletariat they were rapidly dividing into two camps, the minority siding with the Bolsheviks for privilege and power, the majority becoming increasingly discontented with the suppression of the liberties won by the revolution.

“Have you a Committee of the Poor in this house?” I asked Stepanovna. “Yes,” she said, and turning to Dmitri added, “Mind, Mitka, you say nothing to them of Ivan Pavlovitch.”

Stepanovna told me the committee was formed of three servant girls, the yard-keeper, and the house-porter. The entire house with forty flats was under their administration. “From time to time,” said Stepanovna, “they come and take some furniture to decorate the apartments they have occupied on the ground floor. That is all they seem to think of. The house-porter is never in his place in the hall” (for this I was profoundly thankful), “and when we need him we can never find him.”

Varia accompanied me to the door as I departed. “If you want to come back,” she said, “I don’t think Stepanovna will mind.” I insisted on paying for the food I had eaten and set out to look again for Melnikoff.

The morning was raw and snow began to fall. People hurried along the streets clasping bundles and small parcels. Queues, mostly of working women, were waiting outside small stores with notices printed on canvas over the lintel “First Communal Booth,” “Second Communal Booth,” and so on, where bread was being distributed in small quantities against food cards. There was rarely enough to go round, so people came and stood early, shivering in the biting wind. Similar queues formed later in the day outside larger establishments marked “Communal Eating House, Number so-and-so.” One caught snatches of conversation from these queues. “Why don’t the ‘comrades’ have to stand in queues?” a woman would exclaim indignantly. “Where are all the Jews? Does Trotzky stand in a queue?” and so on. Then, receiving their modicum of bread, they would carry it hastily away, either in their bare hands, or wrapped up in paper brought for the purpose, or shielded under the shawls which they muffled round their ears and neck.

Again I trudged across the river and up the long Kamenostrovsky Prospect to Melnikoff’s hospital, but again he had not returned and they knew nothing of him. Wandering irresolutely about the city I drifted into the district where I had formerly lived, and here in a side-street I came unexpectedly upon a window on which a slip of paper was pasted with the word “Dinners,” written in pencil. This, I could see, was no “communal eating-house.” Without a ticket I could not go to a communal eating-house, so I peered cautiously into the door of the little establishment and found that a single room on the ground floor, probably once a store, had been cleared out and fitted with three tiny tables, large enough to accommodate half-a-dozen people in all. Everything was very simple, clearly a temporary arrangement, but very clean. The room being empty, I entered.

“Dinner?” queried a young lady, appearing from behind a curtain. “Yes, please.” “Will you sit down a moment?” she said. “It is rather early, but it will be ready soon.”

Presently she brought a plate of gruel, small in quantity but good. “Bread, I am afraid, is extra,” she observed when I asked for it. “Can I get dinner here every day?” I inquired. “As long as they do not close us down,” she replied with a shrug. I drew her into conversation. “We have been here a week,” she explained. “People come in who have no food cards or who want something better than the communal eating-houses. My father used to keep a big restaurant in Sadovaya Street and when the Bolsheviks shut it he went into a smaller one in the backyard. When that was closed, too, we moved in here, where one of father’s cooks used to live. We cannot put up a sign, that would attract attention, but you can come as long as the paper is in the window. If it is not there, do not enter; it will mean the Reds are in possession.”

For second course she brought carrots. Three other people came in during the meal and I saw at once that they were persons of education and good station, though they all looked haggard and worn. All ate their small portions with avidity, counting out their payment with pitiful reluctance. One of them looked a typical professor, and of the others, both ladies, I guessed one might be a teacher. Though we sat close to each other there was no conversation.

Purchasing three small white loaves to take with me, I returned in the afternoon to Stepanovna’s. My humble friends were delighted at this simple contribution to the family fare, for they did not know white bread was still procurable. I telephoned to Vera Alexandrovna, using a number she had given me, but Melnikoff was not there and nothing was known of him.

So with Stepanovna’s consent to stay another night I sat in the kitchen sipping Dmitri’s tea and listening to their talk. Stepanovna and Varia unburdened their hearts without restraint, and somehow it was strange to hear them abusing their house committee, or committee of the poor, as it was also called, composed of people of their own station. “Commissars” and “Communists” they frankly classed as svolotch, which is a Russian term of extreme abuse.

It was a prevalent belief of the populace at this time that the allies, and particularly the British, were planning to invade Russia and relieve the stricken country. Hearing them discussing the probability of such an event, and the part their master Ivan Sergeievitch might take in it, I told them straight out that I was an Englishman, a disclosure the effect of which was electric. For a time they would not credit it, for in appearance I might be any nationality but English. Stepanovna was a little frightened, but Dmitri sat still and a broad smile gradually spread over his good-natured features. When we sat down about nine I found quite a good supper with meat and potatoes, prepared evidently chiefly for me, for their own dinner was at midday.

“However did you get the meat?” I exclaimed as Stepanovna bustled about to serve me.

“That is Dmitri’s army ration,” she said, simply. Dmitri sat still on his box against the kitchen wall, but the smile never departed from his face.

That night I found Varia had made up for me the best bed in the flat, and lying in this unexpected luxury I tried to sum up my impressions of the first two days of adventure. For two days I had wandered round the city, living from minute to minute and hour to hour, unnoticed. I no longer saw eyes in every wall. I felt that I really passed with the crowd. Only now and again someone would glance curiously and perhaps enviously at my black leather breeches. But the breeches themselves aroused no suspicions, for the commissars all wore good leather clothes. None the less, I resolved I would smear my breeches with dirt before sallying forth on the morrow, so that they would not look so new. How shabbily everyone was dressed, I mused drowsily. But the peasants looked the same as ever in their sheepskin coats and bast shoes. One of the pamphlets I had bought was an address to the peasantry, entitled Join the Communes, urging the peasants to labour not for pecuniary gain but for the common weal, supplying bread to the town workers who would in turn produce for the peasantry. The idea was a beautiful one, but the idealistic conception was completely submerged in the welter of rancour and incitement of class-hatred. I recalled my talk with the cabman who told me it cost him two hundred roubles a day to feed his horse because the peasantry refused to bring provender to the cities. Two hundred roubles, I reflected dreamily as I dozed off, was half my monthly wages of the previous year and twice as much as I earned before the war teaching English. I reheard snatches of conversation at the railway station, at the little dining-room, and with Stepanovna. Was everyone really so bitter as Stepanovna said they were? Stepanovna and Varia were devoted to their master and thought in their simplicity Ivan Sergeievitch would return with the English. Anyway, it was nice of them to give me this bed. There were no sheets, but the blankets were warm and they had even found me an old pair of pyjamas. I nestled cosily into the blankets; the streets, Stepanovna, and the room faded away in a common blur, and I passed into the silent land of no dreams.

---

I was awakened rudely by a loud ring at the bell, and sprang up, all alert. It was a quarter to eight. Who, I asked myself, could the callers be? A search? Had the house committee heard of the unregistered lodger? What should I say? I would say Stepanovna was a relative, I would complain rudely of being disturbed, I would bluster, I would flaunt my passport of the Extraordinary Commission. Or perhaps Stepanovna and Varia would somehow explain away my presence, for they knew the members of the committee. I began dressing hastily. I could hear Stepanovna and Varia conferring in the kitchen. Then they both shuffled along the passage to the door. I heard the door opened, first on the chain, and then a moment’s silence. At last the chain was removed. Someone was admitted and the door closed. I heard men’s voices and boots tramping along the passage. Convinced now that a search was to be made I fished feverishly in my pockets to get out my passport for demonstration, when—into the room burst Melnikoff! Never was I so dumbfounded in my life! Melnikoff was dressed in other clothes than I had seen him in when we last parted and he wore spectacles which altered his appearance considerably. Behind him entered a huge fellow, a sort of Ilia Murometz, whose stubble-covered face brimmed over with smiles beaming good-nature and jollity. This giant was dressed in a rough and ragged brown suit and in his hand he squeezed a dirty hat.

“Marsh,” observed Melnikoff, curtly, by way of introduction, smiling at my incredulity. We shook hands heartily all round while I still fumbled my passport. “I was about to defy you with that!” I laughed, showing them the paper. “Tell me, how the——I thought you were in prison!”

“Not quite!” Marsh exclaimed, dropping into English at once. “I had a lucky escape! Slithered down a drainpipe outside the kitchen window into the next yard as the Reds came in at the front door. Shaved my beard at once.” He rubbed his chin. “About time, by the way, I saw the barber again. The blighters are looking for me everywhere. I was held up one evening by one of their damned spies under a lamp-post. I screwed my face into a grimace and asked him for a light. Then I knocked him down. And yesterday evening I was going into a yard on Sadovaya Street when under the arch I heard someone behind me say, ‘Marsh!’ I sprang round, just about to administer the same medicine, when I saw it was Melnikoff!”

“But how did you find me here?” I said.

“Ask Melnikoff.” I asked Melnikoff in Russian. He was nervous and impatient.

“Luck,” he replied. “I guessed you might possibly be in Sergeievitch’s flat, and so you are. But listen, I can’t stay here long. I’m being looked for, too. You can meet me safely at three this afternoon at the 15th communal eating-house in the Nevsky. You don’t need a ticket to enter. I’ll tell you everything then. Don’t stay more than two nights in one place.”

“All right,” I said, “three o’clock at the 15th eating-house.”

“And don’t go to Vera’s any more,” he added as he hurried away. “Something is wrong there. Good-bye.”

“Get dressed,” said Marsh when Melnikoff had gone, “and I’ll take you straight along to a place you can go to regularly. But rely mainly on Melnikoff, he’s the cleverest card I ever saw.”

Stepanovna, beaming with pleasure and pride at having two Englishmen in her flat, and nervous at the same time on account of the circumstances, brought in tea, and I told Marsh of my mission to Russia. Though he had not been connected with intelligence organizations, he knew people who had, and mentioned the names of a number of persons whose aid might be re-enlisted. One or two occupied high positions in the Ministry of War and the Admiralty.

But there was a more pressing task on hand than intelligence. The Bolsheviks suspected Marsh, together with other Englishmen, of complicity, in assisting allied citizens who were refused passports to escape from the country secretly. Numerous arrests among foreigners were being made and Marsh had had a hairbreadth escape. But his wife had been seized in his stead as hostage, and this calamity filled him with concern.

Mrs. Marsh was imprisoned at the notorious No. 2 Goróhovaya Street, the address of the Extraordinary Commission, and Marsh was awaiting the report of a man who had connections with the Commission as to the possibilities of effecting her escape. “This man,” explained Marsh, “was, I believe, an official of the ohrana (the Tsar’s personal secret police) before the revolution, and is doing some sort of clerical work in a Soviet institution now. The Bolsheviks are re-engaging Tsarist police agents for the Extraordinary Commission, so he has close connections there and knows most of what goes on. He is a liar and it is difficult to believe what he says, but” (Marsh paused and rubbed his forefinger and thumb together to indicate that finance entered into the transaction), “if you outbid the Bolsheviks, this fellow can do things. Understand?”

Marsh put me up to the latest position of everything in Petrograd. He also said he would be able to find me lodging for a few nights until I had some settled mode of living. He had wide acquaintanceship in the city and many of his friends lived in a quiet, unobtrusive manner, working for a living in Soviet offices.

“Better be moving along now,” he said when we had finished tea. “I’ll go ahead because we mustn’t walk together. Follow me in about five minutes, and you’ll find me standing by the hoarding round the Kazan Cathedral.”

“The hoarding round the Kazan Cathedral? So you know that hoarding, too?” I asked, recalling my intention of hiding in that very place.

“I certainly do,” he exclaimed. “Spent the first night there after my escape. Now I’ll be off. When you see me shoot off from the hoarding follow me as far behind as you can. So long.”

“By the way,” I said, as he went out, “that hoarding—it doesn’t happen to be a regular shelter for—for homeless and destitute Englishmen or others, does it?”

“Not that I know of,” he laughed. “Why?”

“Oh, nothing. I only wondered.”

I let Marsh out and heard his steps re-echoing down the stone staircase.

“I shall not be back to-night, Stepanovna,” I said, preparing to follow him. “I can’t tell you how grateful——”

“Oh, but, Ivan Pavlovitch,” exclaimed the good woman, “you can come here any time you like. If anything happens,” she added in a lower tone, “we’ll say you belong to us. No one need know.”

“Well, well,” I said, “but not to-night. Good-bye, good-bye.” While Stepanovna and Varia let me out I had a vision of Dmitri standing at the kitchen door, stolidly munching a crust of black bread.

Outside the hoarding of the Kazan Cathedral I espied the huge figure of Marsh sitting on a stone. When he saw me over the way he rose and slouched along with his collar turned up, diving into side streets and avoiding the main thoroughfares. I followed at a distance. Eventually we came out on to the Siennaya market, crossed it, and plunged into the maze of streets to the south. Marsh disappeared under an arch and, following his steps, I found myself in a dark, filthy, reeking yard with a back-stair entrance on either hand. Marsh stood at the stairway on the left. “Flat No. 5 on the second floor,” he said. “We can go up together.”

The stairway was narrow and littered with rubbish. At a door with “5” chalked on it Marsh banged loudly three times with his fist, and it was opened by a woman dressed plainly in black, who greeted Marsh with exclamations of welcome and relief.

“Aha, Maria,” he shouted boisterously, “here we are, you see—not got me yet. And won’t get me, unless I’ve got a pumpkin on my shoulders instead of a head!”

Maria was his housekeeper. She looked questioningly at me, obviously doubtful whether I ought to be admitted. Marsh roared with laughter. “All right, Maria,” he cried, “let him in. He’s only my comrade—comrades in distress, and ha! ha! ha! ‘comrades’ in looks, eh, Maria?”

Maria smiled curiously. “Certainly ‘comrades’ in looks,” she said, slowly.

“By the way,” asked Marsh, as we passed into an inner room, “what name are you using?”

“Afirenko,” I said. “But that’s official. Tell Maria I’m called ‘Ivan Ilitch.’”

Maria set the samovar and produced some black bread and butter.

“This flat,” said Marsh, with his mouth full, “belonged to a business colleague of mine. The Reds seized him by mistake for someone else. The silly fool nearly (here Marsh used a very unparliamentary expression) with funk when he got arrested. Sat in chokey three days and was told he was to be shot, when luckily for him the right man was collared. Then they let him out and I shipped him over the frontier. They’ll forget all about him. In the daytime this is one of the safest places in town.”

The flat was almost devoid of furniture. A bare table stood in one room and a desk in another. An old couch and a few chairs made up the outfit. The windows were so dirty that they were quite opaque and admitted very little light from the narrow street. Although it was nearly midday an oil lamp burned on the table of the room we sat in. Electric light was becoming rarer and rarer and only burned for a few hours every evening.

Marsh sat and talked of his adventures and the work he had been doing for the allied colonies. His country farm had been seized and pillaged, his city business was ruined, he had long been under suspicion, and yet he refused to leave. But the arrest of his wife bore constantly on his mind. From time to time his boisterous flow of talk would suddenly cease. He would pass his hand over his brow, a far-away, troubled look coming into his eyes.

“If only it were an ordinary prison,” he would say, “if only they were human beings. But these——! By the way, will you come with me to see the Policeman? I am going to meet him in half-an-hour.” The “Policeman” was the nickname by which we referred to the Tsarist official of whom Marsh had spoken in the morning. I reflected for a moment. Perhaps the Policeman might be useful to me later. I consented.

Telling Maria to look out for us both about that time next morning, we left the flat by the back entrance, as we had entered it. Again Marsh walked ahead, and I followed his slouching figure at a distance as he wound in and out of side streets. The dwelling we were going to, he told me, was that of an ex-journalist, who was now engaged as a scribe in the Department of Public Works, and it was at the Journalist’s that he had arranged to meet the Policeman.

The Journalist lived all alone in a flat in the Liteiny Prospect. I watched Marsh disappear into the entrance and waited a moment to convince myself he was not being tracked. From the opposite sidewalk I saw him look back through the glass door, signalling that all was well within, so giving him time to mount the stairs I followed.

He rang the bell at a door covered with oilcloth and felt. After a moment’s silence there was a shuffling of slippers, an inner door opened, and a voice said, “Who’s there?”

“He expects me to say who’s here, the silly fool,” growled Marsh under his breath, adding just loud enough to be heard through the door, “I.”

“Who? ‘I’?” persisted the voice.

“I, Peter Sergeievitch” (aloud), “blithering idiot” (undertone), said Marsh.

There was much undoing of bars and bolts, and finally, the door opening slightly on the chain, a pair of nervous, twinkling eyes peered through the chink.

“Ah!” said the nervous face, breaking into a smile, “Ivan Petrovitch!” The door closed again and the chain was removed. Then it reopened and we passed in.

“Why the devil couldn’t you open at once?” grumbled Marsh. “You knew I was coming. ‘Who’s there?’ indeed! Do you want me to bawl ‘Marsh’ at the top of my voice outside your door?” At this the nervous man looked terrified. “Well, then, why don’t you open? ‘Ivan Petrovitch’ or ‘Peter Sergeievitch’—can’t any one be Ivan Petrovitch? Isn’t that just why I am ‘Ivan Petrovitch’?”

“Yes, yes,” answered the nervous man, “but nowadays one never knows who may be at the door.”

“Well, then, open and look, or next time I will shout ‘Marsh.’” The nervous man looked more terrified than ever. “Well, well,” laughed Marsh, “I am only joking. This is my friend—er——”

“Michael Mihailovitch,” I put in.

“Very glad to see you, Michael Mihailovitch,” said the nervous man, looking anything but glad.

The Journalist was a man of thirty-five years of age, though his thin and pale features, dishevelled hair, and ragged beard gave him the appearance of being nearly fifty. He was attired in an old greenish overcoat with the collar turned up, and dragged his feet about in a pair of worn-out carpet slippers. The flat was on the shady side of the street, the sun never peered into its gloomy precincts, it was dark and musty, and icy cold.

“Well, how go things, Dmitri Konstantinovitch?” asked Marsh.

“Poorly, poorly, Ivan Petrovitch,” said the Journalist, coughing. “This is the third day I have not been to work. You will excuse my proceeding with business; I’m having lunch. Come into the kitchen, it is the least cold of all rooms.”

The Journalist, preparing his noonday meal, was engaged in boiling a few potatoes over a stick fire in a tiny portable stove. “Two days’ rations,” he remarked, ironically, holding up a salt herring. “How do they expect us to live, indeed? And half-a-pound of bread into the bargain. That’s how they feed the bourgeois in return for sweating for them. And if you don’t sweat for them, then you get nothing. ‘He who toileth not, neither let him eat,’ as they say. But it’s only ‘toil’ if it is to their advantage. If you toil to your own advantage, then it is called ‘speculation,’ and you get shot. Ugh! A pretty state our Russia has come to, indeed! Do we not rightly say we are a herd of sheep?”

Continuing in this strain the Journalist scraped his smelly herring and began eating it with his potatoes ravenously and yet gingerly, knowing that the quicker he finished the scanty repast the sooner he would realize there was nothing more. Picking the skeleton clean, he sucked the tail and dug his fork into the head for the last scraps of meat.

“Plus 1,000 roubles a month,” he went on. “Here I eat two days’ rations at a single meal, and what can I buy with 1,000 roubles? A few pounds of potatoes, a pound or two of bread and butter? Then there’s nothing left for fuel, when wood that used to cost 5 roubles a sazhen now costs 500!”

From his overcoat pocket Marsh produced half-a-pound of bread. “Here, Dmitri Konstantinovitch,” he said, thrusting it toward him, “your health!”

The Journalist’s face became transfigured. Its haggard look vanished. He glanced up, his mouth fixed in a half-laugh of delight and incredulity, his sunken eyes sparkling with childlike pleasure and gratitude.

“For me?” he exclaimed, scarcely believing his eyes. “But what about yourself? Surely you do not get sufficient, especially since——”

“Don’t worry about me,” said Marsh, with his good-natured smile. “You know Maria? She is a wonder! She gets everything. From my farm she managed to save several sacks of potatoes and quite a lot of bread, and hide it all here in town. But listen, Dmitri Konstantinovitch, I’m expecting a visitor here soon, the same man as the day before yesterday. I will take him into the other room, so that he need not see you.”

The Journalist, I could see, was overcome with fear at being obliged to receive Marsh’s unwelcome visitor, but he said nothing. He wrapped the bread carefully up in paper and put it away in a cupboard. A moment later there were three sharp rings at the bell. Marsh hurried to the door, admitted his visitor, and led him into the Journalist’s study.

“You may as well come in, too,” he said to me, looking into the kitchen.

“Michael Ivanitch,” I whispered, pointing at myself, as we passed in. Marsh introduced me. “My friend, Michael Ivanitch Schmit,” he said.

My first impulse when I saw the individual Marsh nicknamed “the Policeman” was to laugh, for any one less like a policeman than the little man who rose and bowed I have seldom seen. I will not describe him too precisely, but he was short, red-faced, and insignificant-looking. In spite of this, however, his manner showed that he had a very high opinion of his own importance. He shook hands and reseated himself with comical dignity.

“Go on, Alexei Fomitch,” said Marsh. “I want my friend to know how matters stand. He may be able to help.”

“Madame Marsh, as I was saying,” proceeded the Policeman, “is incarcerated in chamber No. 4 with thirty-eight other women of various station, including titled personages, servant girls, and prostitutes. The chamber is not a large one and I fear the conditions are far from pleasant. My informants tell me she is cross-examined several hours every day with the object of eliciting the hiding-place of Monsieur Marsh, which they believe she knows. Unfortunately her case is complicated by the confused replies she has given, for after several hours’ interrogation it often becomes difficult to retain clarity of mind. Confused or incoherent replies, even though accidental, lead to further and still more exacting interpellation.”

Marsh followed every word with a concern that was not lost upon the Policeman. “But can we not get round the interrogators?” he asked, “they all have their price, damn it.”

“Yes, that is often so,” continued the Policeman in a tone of feigned consolation. “The investigator can frequently be induced to turn the evidence in favour of the accused. But in this case it is unfortunately useless to offer the usual bribe, for even if Madame Marsh’s innocence is proven to the hilt, she will still be detained as a hostage until the discovery of Monsieur Marsh.”

Marsh’s face twitched. “I feared so,” he said in a dull voice. “What are the chances of flight?”

“I was coming to that,” said the Policeman, suavely. “I am already making inquiries on the subject. But it will take some days to arrange. The assistance of more than one person will have to be enlisted. And I fear—I hesitate,” he added in unctuous tones of regret, “I hesitate to refer to such a matter—but I am afraid this method may be a little more—er—costly. Pardon me for——”

“Money?” cried Marsh. “Damn it all, man, don’t you realize it is my wife? How much do you want?”

“Oh, Monsieur Marsh,” expostulated the Policeman, raising his palm, “you are well aware that I take nothing for myself. I do this out of friendship to you—and our gallant allies. But there is a prison janitor, I must give him 5,000, two warders 10,000, a go-between 2,000, odd expenses——”

“Stop!” put in Marsh, abruptly, “tell me how much it will cost.”

The Policeman’s face assumed a pained expression. “It may cost,” he said, “twenty-five, possibly thirty thousand roubles.”

“Thirty thousand. You shall have it. I gave you ten thousand, here are another ten thousand; you shall have the third ten thousand the day my wife leaves prison.”

The Policeman took the notes, and with a look of offended dignity, as though the handling of money were altogether beneath him, hid them in an inner pocket.

“When will you be able to report again?” asked Marsh.

“I expect the day after to-morrow. If you like to come to my house it is quite safe.”

“Very well, we will meet there. And now, if you are not in a hurry, I’ll see if I can raise some tea. It’s damned cold in this room.”

When Marsh had gone into the kitchen the little Policeman ventured to open conversation.

“Such times, such times,” he sighed. “Who would have thought it possible? You live in Petrograd, Michael Ivanitch?”

“Yes.”

“You are in service, perhaps?”

“Yes.”

There was a pause.

“Yours must have been an interesting occupation,” I remarked, “in days gone by.”

“You mean?”

“You were connected with the police, were you not?”

I saw at once I had made a faux pas. The little man turned very red. “I beg your pardon,” I hastened to add, “I understood you were an official of the ohrana.”

This apparently was still worse. The little Policeman sat up very straight, flushing deeply and looking rather like a turkey-cock.

“No, sir,” he said in what were intended to be icy tones, “you have been grossly misinformed. I have never been connected either with the police or the ohrana. Under the Tsar, sir, I moved in Court circles. I had the ear of his late Imperial Majesty, and the Imperial Palace was open to me at any time.”

At this point, fortunately for me, Marsh returned with three glasses of tea, apologizing for not providing sugar, and the conversation turned to the inevitable subject of famine. At length the Policeman rose to go.

“By the way, Alexei Fomitch,” said Marsh, “can you find me a lodging for to-night?”

“A lodging for to-night? I shall be honoured, Monsieur Marsh, if you will accept such hospitality as I myself can offer. I have an extra bed, though my fare, I am afraid, will not be luxurious. Still, such as it is——”

“Thank you. I will come as near nine o’clock as possible.”

“Give three short rings, and I will open the door myself,” said the Policeman.

When he had gone I told Marsh of our conversation and asked what the little man meant by “moving in Court circles.” Marsh was greatly amused.

“Oh, he was a private detective or something,” he said. “Conceited as hell about it. ‘Ear of the Tsar,’ indeed! What he’s after is money. He’ll pocket most of the 30,000. But he’s afraid of us, too. He’s cocksure the Allies are coming into Petrograd, so if you have anything to do with him tell him you’re an Englishman and he’ll grovel. By the way, we had better let Dmitri Konstantinovitch into the secret, too, because you will find this flat very useful. The Journalist is a damned old coward, but buy him some grub or, still better, pay for his fuel and he will let you use the flat as much as you like.”

So the nervous ex-journalist was initiated into the great secret, and when Marsh said, “You don’t mind if he comes in occasionally to sleep on the sofa, do you?” Dmitri Konstantinovitch nearly died with fear. His thin lips vibrated, and clearer than any words his twitching smile and tear-filled eyes implored, “Oh, for God’s sake, leave me alone!”—until I said boldly, “But I don’t like sleeping in the cold, Dmitri Konstantinovitch. Perhaps you could get some wood in for me. Here is the price of a sazhen of logs; we will share the wood, of course.” Then his care-worn, troubled face again became suddenly transfigured as it had when Marsh gave him bread. “Ah, splendid, splendid,” he cried in delight, his fears completely obliterated by the anticipation of coming warmth. “I will get the wood in this very afternoon, and you shall have sheets and blankets and I will make you comfortable.” So it was arranged that unless Melnikoff found me a more suitable place I should return to the Journalist’s that night.

It was now time for me to be thinking of keeping my appointment with Melnikoff at the communal eating-house. So I left Marsh, arranging to meet him at the empty flat “No. 5” next morning. Musing on the events of the day I made my way down the staircase and came out again into the Liteiny Prospect. It seemed ages since, but two days ago, I walked along this same street on the day of my arrival in Petrograd, after crossing the frontier. What would Melnikoff now have to tell me, I wondered?

As I rounded the corner of the Nevsky Prospect I noticed a concourse of people outside the communal eating-house toward which I was directing my steps. I followed the people, who were moving hurriedly across the street to the other side. At the entrance to the eating-house stood two sailors on guard with fixed bayonets, while people were filing out of the building singly, led by militiamen. In the dark lobby within one could dimly discern individuals being searched. Their documents were being examined and, standing in their shirt-sleeves, their clothing was being subjected to strict investigation.

I waited to see if Melnikoff would emerge from the building. After a moment I felt a tap on my arm and looking round I was confronted by Zorinsky, the officer who had accosted me in the café of Vera Alexandrovna on the day of my arrival. Zorinsky signalled to me to move aside with him.

“Were you to meet Melnikoff here?” he asked. “It is lucky for you you did not enter the restaurant. The place is being raided. I was about to go in myself, but came a little late, thank God. Melnikoff was one of the first to be arrested and has already been taken away.”

“What is the cause of the raid?” I asked, dismayed by this news.

“Who knows?” replied Zorinsky. “These things are done spasmodically. Melnikoff has been tracked for some days, I believe, and it may have been on his account. Anyway, it is serious, for he is well known.”

People were beginning to move away and the search was clearly nearing its end.

“What are you going to do?” said my companion.

“I do not know,” I replied, not wishing to confide any of my movements to Zorinsky.

“We must begin to think of some way of getting him out,” he said. “Melnikoff was a great friend of mine, but you are, I expect, as interested in his release as I am.”

“Is there any chance?” I exclaimed. “Of course I am interested.”

“Then I suggest you come home with me and we will talk it over. I live quite near.”

Anxious to learn of any possibility of saving Melnikoff, I consented. We passed into Troitzkaya Street and entered a large house on the right.

“How do you wish me to call you?” asked Zorinsky as we mounted the staircase. I was struck by the considerateness of his question and replied, “Pavel Ivanitch.”

The flat in which Zorinsky lived was large and luxuriously furnished, and showed no signs of molestation. “You live comfortably,” I remarked, sinking into a deep leather arm-chair. “Yes, we do pretty well,” he replied. “My wife, you see, is an actress. She receives as many provisions as she wants and our flat is immune from requisition of furniture or the obtrusion of workmen. We will go round some evening, if you like, and see her dance. As for me, my wife has registered me as a sub-manager of the theatre, so that I receive additional rations also. These things, you know, are not difficult to arrange! Thus I am really a gentleman at large, and living like many others at the expense of a generous proletarian régime. My hobby,” he added, idly, “is contre-espionnage.”

“What?” I cried, the exclamation escaping me inadvertently.

“Contre-espionnage,” he repeated, smiling. When he smiled one end of his crooked mouth remained stationary, while the other seemed to jut right up into his cheek. “Why should you be surprised? Tout le monde est contre-révolutionnaire: it is merely a question of whether one is actively or passively so.” He took from a drawer a typewritten sheet of paper and handed it to me. “Does that by any chance interest you?”

I glanced at the paper. The writing was full of uncorrected orthographical errors, showing it had been typed by an unpractised hand in extreme haste. Scanning the first few lines I at once became completely absorbed in the document. It was a report, dated two days previously, of confidential negotiations between the Bolshevist Government and the leaders of non-Bolshevist parties with regard to the possible formation of a coalition Government. Nothing came of the negotiations, but the information was of great importance as showing the nervousness of the Bolshevist leaders at that time and the clearly defined attitude of the Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevist parties toward the military counter-revolution.

“Is it authentic?” I inquired, dubiously.

“That report,” replied Zorinsky, “is at this moment being considered by the central committee of the Menshevist party in this city. It was drawn up by a member of the Menshevist delegation and despatched secretly to Petrograd, for the Bolsheviks do not permit their opponents to communicate freely with each other. I saw the original and obtained a copy two hours before it reached the Menshevist committee.”

The suspicion of forgery immediately arose, but I could see no reason for concocting the document on the off-chance of somebody’s being taken in by it. I handed it back.

“You may as well keep it,” said Zorinsky. “I should have given it to Melnikoff and he would doubtless have given it to you. I am expecting a further report shortly. Yes,” he added, nonchalantly, tapping the arm of the desk-chair in which he sat, “it is an amusing game—contre-espionnage. I used to provide your Captain Crombie with quite a lot of information. But I’m not surprised you have not heard of me, for I always preferred to keep in the background.”

He produced a large box of cigarettes and, ringing a bell, ordered tea.

“I don’t know what you Allies propose doing with regard to Russia,” he observed, offering me a light. “It seems to me you might as well leave us alone as bungle things in the way you are doing. Meanwhile, all sorts of people are conducting, or think they are conducting, espionage underground in Russia, or planning to overthrow the Reds. Are you interested?”

“Very.”

“Well, have you heard of General F.?” Zorinsky launched into an exposition of the internal counter-revolutionary movement, of which he appeared to know extensive details. There existed, he said, belligerent “groups,” planning to seize army stores, blow up bridges, or raid treasuries. “They will never do anything,” he said, derisively, “because they all organize like idiots. The best are the S.R.’s (Socialist-Revolutionaries): they are fanatics, like the Bolsheviks. None of the others could tell you what they want.”

The maid, neatly attired in a clean white apron, brought in tea, served with biscuits, sugar, and lemon. Zorinsky talked on, displaying a remarkable knowledge of everybody’s movements and actions.

“Crombie was a fine fellow,” he said, referring to the British Naval Attaché. “Pity he got killed. Things went to pieces. The fellows who stayed after him had a hard time. The French and Americans have all gone now except (he mentioned a Frenchman living on the Vasili Island) but he doesn’t do much. Marsh had hard luck, didn’t he?”

“Marsh?” I put in. “So you know him, too?”

“Of him,” corrected Zorinsky. All at once he seemed to become interested and leaned over the arm of his chair toward me. “By the way,” he said, in a curious tone, “you don’t happen to know where Marsh is, do you?”

For a moment I hesitated. Perhaps this man, who seemed to know so much, might be able to help Marsh. But I checked myself. Intuitively I felt it wiser to say nothing.

“I have no idea,” I said, decisively.

“Then how do you know about him?”

“I heard in Finland of his arrest.”

Zorinsky leaned back again in his chair and his eyes wandered out of the window.

“I should have thought,” I observed, after a pause, “that knowing all you do, you would have followed his movements.”

“Aha,” he exclaimed, and in the shadow his smile looked like a black streak obliterating one-half of his face, “but there is one place I avoid, and that is No. 2 Goróhovaya! When any one gets arrested I leave him alone. I am wiser than to attempt to probe the mysteries of that institution.”

Zorinsky’s words reminded me abruptly of Melnikoff.

“But you spoke of the possibility of saving Melnikoff,” I said. “Is he not in the hands of No. 2 Goróhovaya?”

He turned round and looked me full in the face. “Yes,” he said, seriously, “with Melnikoff it is different. We must act at once and leave no stone unturned. I know a man who will be able to investigate and I’ll get him on the job to-night. Will you not stay to dinner? My wife will be delighted to meet you, and she understands discretion.”

Seeing no special reason to refuse, I accepted the invitation. Zorinsky went to the telephone and I heard him ask some one to call about nine o’clock “on an urgent matter.”

His wife, Elena Ivanovna, a jolly little creature, but very much of a spoilt child, appeared at dinner dressed in a pink Japanese kimono. The table was daintily set and decked with flowers. As at Vera Alexandrovna’s café, I again felt myself out of place, and apologized for my uncouth appearance.

“Oh! don’t excuse yourself,” said Elena Ivanovna, laughing. “Everyone is getting like that nowadays. How dreadful it is to think of all that is happening! Have the olden days gone for ever, do you think? Will these horrid people never be overthrown?”

“You do not appear to have suffered much, Elena Ivanovna,” I remarked.

“No, of course, I must admit our troupe is treated well,” she replied. “Even flowers, as you see, though you have no idea how horrible it is to have to take a bouquet from a great hulking sailor who wipes his nose with his fingers and spits on the floor. The theatre is just full of them, every night.”

“Your health, Pavel Ivanitch,” said Zorinsky, lifting a glass of vodka. “Ah!” he exclaimed with relish, smacking his lips, “there are places worse than Bolshevia, I declare.”

“You get plenty of vodka?” I asked.

“You get plenty of everything if you keep your wits about you,” said Zorinsky. “Even without joining the Communist Party. I am not a Communist,” he added (somehow I had not suspected it), “but still I keep that door open. What I am afraid of is that the Bolsheviks may begin to make their Communists work. That will be the next step in the revolution unless you Allies arrive and relieve them of that painful necessity. Your health, Pavel Ivanitch.”

The conversation turned on the Great War and Zorinsky recounted a number of incidents in his career. He also gave his views of the Russian people and the revolution. “The Russian peasant,” he said, “is a brute. What he wants is a good hiding, and unless I’m much mistaken the Communists are going to give it to him. Otherwise the Communists go under. In my regiment we used to smash a jaw now and again on principle. That’s the only way to make Russian peasants fight. Have you heard about the Red army? Comrade Trotzky, you see, has already abolished his Red officers, and is inviting—inviting, if you please—us, the ‘counter-revolutionary Tsarist officer swine,’ to accept posts in his new army. Would you ever believe it? By God, I’ve half a mind to join! Trotzky will order me to flog the peasants to my heart’s content. Under Trotzky, mark my words, I would make a career in no time.”

The dinner was a sumptuous banquet for the Petrograd of the period. There was nothing that suggested want. Coffee was served in the drawing-room, while Zorinsky kept up an unceasing flow of strange and cynical but entertaining conversation.

I waited till nearly ten for the call from Zorinsky’s friend with regard to Melnikoff, and then, in view of my uncertainty as to whether the Journalist’s house would still be open, I accepted Zorinsky’s invitation to stay overnight. “There is no reason,” he said, “why you should not come in here whenever you like. We dine every day at six and you are welcome.”

Just as I was retiring Zorinsky was called to the telephone and returned explaining that he would only be able to begin the investigation of Melnikoff’s case next day. I was shown to the spare bedroom, where I found everything provided for me. Zorinsky apologized that he could not offer me a hot bath. “That rascal dvornik downstairs,” he said, referring to the yard-keeper whose duty it was to procure wood for the occupants, “allowed an extra stock of fuel that I had my eyes on to be requisitioned for somebody else, but next week I think I shall be able to get a good supply from the theatre. Good-night—and don’t dream of No. 2 Goróhovaya!”

---

The Extraordinary Commission, spoken of with such abhorrence by Zorinsky, is the most notorious of all Bolshevist institutions. It is an instrument of terror and inquisition designed forcibly to uproot all anti-Bolshevist sentiment throughout Lenin’s dominions. Its full title is the Extraordinary Commission for the Suppression of the Counter-Revolution and Speculation, “speculation” being every form of private commerce—the bugbear of Communism. The Russian title of this institution is Tchrezvitchainaya Kommissia, popularly spoken of as the Tchrezvitchaika, or still shorter the Tche-Ka. The headquarters of the Tche-Ka in Petrograd are situated at No. 2 of the street named Goróhovaya, the seat of the Prefecture of Police during the Tsar’s régime, so that the popular mode of appellation of the Prefecture by its address—“No. 2 Goróhovaya”—has stuck to the Extraordinary Commission and will go down as a by-word in Russian history.

At the head of No. 2 Goróhovaya there sits a soviet, or council, of some half-dozen revolutionary fanatics of the most vehement type. With these lies the final word as to the fate of prisoners. Recommendations are submitted to this soviet by “Investigators” whose duty it is to examine the accused, collect the evidence and report upon it. It is thus in the hands of the “Investigators” that power over prisoners’ lives actually lies, since they are in a position to turn the evidence one way or the other, as they choose.

Investigators vary considerably. There are some who are sincere and upright, though demoniacal visionaries, cold as steel, cruel, unpolluted by thirst for filthy lucre, who see the dawn of proletarian liberty only through mists of non-proletarian blood. Such men (or women) are actuated by malignant longing for revenge for every wrong, real or imaginary, suffered in the past. Believing themselves to be called to perform a sacred task in exterminating the “counter-revolution,” they can upon occasion be civil and courteous, even chivalrous (though that is rare), but never impartial. There are other investigators who are merely corrupt, ready to sacrifice any proletarian interest for a price, regarding their job purely as a means of amassing a fortune by the taking of bribes.

Every responsible official of the Extraordinary Commission must be a member of the Communist Party. The lower staff, however, is composed of hirelings, frequently of foreign origin, and many of them re-engaged agents of the Tsarist police. The latter, who lost their jobs as the result of the revolution which overthrew the Tsarist autocracy, have been re-enlisted as specialists by the Bolsheviks, and find congenial occupation in spying, eavesdropping, and hounding down rebellious or suspected workmen just as they did when the government was the Tsar’s instead of Lenin’s. It is this fact which renders it almost impossible for the Russian workers to organize a revolt against their new taskmasters. It is thus that arose the sobriquet applied to the Red régime of “Tsarism inside out.” The faintest signs of sedition are immediately reported to the Tche-Ka by its secret agents disguised as workers, the ringleaders are then “eliminated” from the factory under pretext of being conscripted elsewhere, and they are frequently never heard of again.

The Extraordinary Commission overshadows all else in Red Russia. No individual is free from its all-perceiving eye. Even Communists stand in awe of it, one of its duties being to unearth black sheep within the Party ranks, and since it never errs on the side of leniency there have been cases of execution of true adherents of the Communist creed under suspicion of being black sheep. On the other hand, the black sheep, being imbued with those very qualities of guile, trickery, and unscrupulous deceit which make the Extraordinary Commission so efficient a machine, generally manage to get off.

One of the most diabolic of the methods copied from Tsarist days and employed by the Extraordinary Commission against non-Bolsheviks is that known in Russia as provocation. Provocation consisted formerly in the deliberate fomentation, by agents who were known as agents-provocateurs, of revolutionary sedition and plots. Such movements would attract to themselves ardent revolutionaries, and when a conspiracy had matured and was about to culminate in some act of terrorism it would be betrayed at the last moment by the agent-provocateur, who frequently succeeded in making himself the most trusted member of the revolutionary group. Agents-provocateurs were recruited from all classes, but chiefly from the intelligentsia. Imitating Tsarism in this as in most of its essentials, the Bolsheviks employ similar agents to foment counter-revolutionary conspiracies and they reward munificently a provocateur who yields to the insatiable Tche-Ka a plentiful crop of “counter-revolutionary” heads.

As under the Tsar, every invention of exquisite villainy is practised to extract from captives, thus or otherwise seized, the secret of accomplices or sympathizers. Not without reason was Marsh haunted with fears that his wife, nerve-racked and doubtless underfed, if fed at all, might be subjected to treatment that would test her self-control to the extreme. She did not know where he was, but she knew all his friends and acquaintances, an exhaustive list of whom would be insistently demanded. She had already, according to the Policeman, given confused replies, which were bound to complicate her case. The inquisition would become ever more relentless, until at last——

On the day following my visit to Zorinsky I appeared punctually at eleven o’clock at the empty flat with “No. 5” chalked on the back door. It was not far from Zorinsky’s, but I approached it by a circuitous route, constantly looking round to assure myself I was not being followed. The filthy yard was as foul and noisome as ever, vying in stench with the gloomy staircase, and I met no one. Maria, no longer suspicious, opened the door in answer to my three knocks. “Peter Ivanitch is not here yet,” she said, “but he should be in any minute.” So I sat down to read the Soviet newspapers.

Marsh’s three thumps at the back door were not long in making themselves heard. Maria hurried along the passage, I heard the lock creak, the door stiffly tugged open, and then suddenly a little stifled cry from Maria. I rose quickly. Marsh burst, or rather tumbled, into the room with his head and face bound up in a big black shawl. As he laboriously unwound it I had a vision of Maria in the doorway, her fist in her mouth, staring at him speechless and terrified.

It was a strange Marsh that emerged from the folds of the black shawl. The invincible smile struggled to maintain itself, but his eyes were bleared and wandered aimlessly, and he shook with agitation despite his efforts to retain self-control.

“My wife——” he stammered, half coherently, dropping into a chair and fumbling feverishly for his handkerchief. “She was subjected yesterday—seven hours’ cross-examination—uninterruptedly—no food—not even allowed to sit down—until finally she swooned. She has said something—I don’t know what. I am afraid——” He rose and strode up and down, mumbling so that I could scarcely understand, but I caught the word “indiscretion”—and understood all he wished to say.

After a few moments he calmed and sat down again. “The Policeman came home at midnight,” he said, “and told me all about it. I questioned and questioned again and am sure he is not lying. The Bolsheviks believe she was implicated in some conspiracy, so they made her write three autobiographies, and” (he paused) “they—are all different. Now—she is being compelled to explain discrepancies, but she can’t remember anything and her mind seems to be giving. Meanwhile, the Bolsheviks are resolved to eradicate, once and for all, all ‘English machinations,’ as they call it, in Russia. They know I’ve shaved and changed my appearance and a special detachment of spies is on the hunt for me, with a big reward offered to the finder.”

He paused and swallowed at a gulp the glassful of tea Maria had placed beside him.

“Look here, old man,” he said, suddenly, laying his hands out flat on the table in front of him, “I am going to ask you to help me out. The ‘Policeman’ says it’s worse for her that I should be here than if I go. So I’m going. Once they know I’ve fled, the Policeman says, they will cease plaguing her, and it may be easier to effect an escape. Tell me, will you take the job over for me?”

“My dear fellow,” I said, “I had already resolved that I would attempt nothing else until we had safely got your wife out of prison. And the day she gets out I will escort her over the frontier myself. I shall have to go to Finland to report, anyway.”

He was going to thank me but I shut him up.

“When will you go?” I asked.

“To-morrow. There are a number of things to be done. Have you got much money?”

“Enough for myself, but no reserve.”

“I will leave you all I have,” he said, “and to-day I’ll go and see a business friend of mine who may be able to get some more. He is a Jew, but is absolutely trustworthy.”

“By the way,” I asked, when this matter was decided, “ever heard of a Captain Zorinsky?”

“Zorinsky? Zorinsky? No. Who is he?”

“A fellow who seems to know a lot about you,” I said. “Says he is a friend of Melnikoff’s, though I never heard Melnikoff mention him. Yesterday he was particularly anxious to know your present address.”

“You didn’t tell him?” queried Marsh, nervously.

“What do you take me for?”

“You can tell him day after to-morrow,” he laughed.

Marsh went off to his business friend, saying he would warn him of my possible visit, and stayed there all day. I remained at “No. 5” and wrote up in minute handwriting on tracing paper a preliminary report on the general situation in Petrograd, which I intended to ask Marsh to take with him. To be prepared for all contingencies I gave the little scroll to Maria when it was finished and she hid it at the bottom of a pail of ashes.

Next morning Marsh turned up at “No. 5” dressed in a huge sheepskin coat with a fur collar half engulfing his face. This was the disguise in which he was going to escape across the frontier. As passport he had procured the “certificate of identification” of his coachman, who had come into Petrograd from the expropriated farm to see Maria. With his face purposely dirtied, and decorated with three days’ growth of reddish beard, a driver’s cap that covered his ears, and a big sack on his back to add a peasant touch to his get-up, Marsh looked—well, like nothing on earth, to use the colloquial expression! It was a get-up that defied description, yet in a crowd of peasants would not attract particular attention.

Confident that he was doing the right thing by quitting, Marsh had completely recovered his former good spirits and joked boisterously as he put a finishing touch here and there to his disguise. I gave him my report and folding it flat into a packet about two inches square he removed one of his top boots and hid it inside the sole of his sock. “The population of hell will be increased by several new arrivals before the Bolsheviks find that,” he said, pulling on his boot again and slipping a heavy revolver inside his trousers.

Poor Maria was terribly distressed at Marsh’s departure. So was the coachman, who could find no terms wherein to express his disgust and indignation at the conduct of the elder of the two stable-boys, who had joined the Bolsheviks, assisted in sacking Marsh’s country house and farm, and was now appointed Commissar in supreme control of the establishment. The coachman exhausted a luxuriant fund of expletives in describing how the stable-boy now sprawled in Marsh’s easy-chairs, spitting on the floor, how all the photographs had been smashed to pieces, and the drawing-room carpets littered with dirt, cigarette-ends, and rubbish. At all of which Marsh roared with laughter, much to the perplexity of the coachman and Maria.

With trembling hands Maria placed a rough meal on the table, while Marsh repeated to me final details of the route he was taking and by which I should follow with his wife. “Fita,” he said, mentioning the name of the Finnish guide on whom he was relying, “lives a mile from Grusino station. When you get out of the train walk in the other direction till everybody has dispersed, then turn back and go by the forest path straight to his cottage. He will tell you what to do.”

At last it was time to start. Marsh and I shook hands and wished each other good-luck, and I went out first, so as not to witness the pathetic parting from his humble friends. I heard him embrace them both, heard Maria’s convulsive sobs—and I hurried down the stone stairway and out into the street. I walked rapidly to the street-car terminal in the Mihailovsky Square, and wandered round it till Marsh appeared. We made no sign of recognition. He jumped on one of the cars, and I scrambled on to the next.

It was dark by the time we reached the distant Okhta railway station, a straggling wooden structure on the outskirts of the town. But standing on the wooden boards of the rough platform I easily discerned the massive figure, pushing and scrambling amid a horde of peasants toward the already over-crowded coaches. Might is right in Red Russia, as everywhere else. The Soviet Government has not yet nationalized muscle. I watched a huge bulk of sheepskin, with a dangling and bouncing grey sack, raise itself by some mysterious process of elevation above the heads and shoulders of the seething mass around and transplant itself on to the buffers. Thence it rose to the roof, and finally, assisted by one or two admiring individuals already ensconced within the coach, it lowered itself down the side and disappeared through the black aperture of what had once been a window. I hung around for half an hour or so, until a series of prolonged and piercing whistles from the antediluvian-looking locomotive announced that the driver had that day condescended to set his engine in motion. There was a jolt, a series of violent creaks, the loud ejaculations of passengers, a scramble of belated peasants to hook themselves on to protruding points in the vicinity of steps, buffers, footboards, etc., and the train with its load of harassed creatures slowly rumbled forward out of the station.

I stood and watched it pass into the darkness and, as it vanished, the cold, the gloom, the universal dilapidation seemed to become intensified. I stood, listening to the distant rumble of the train, until I found myself alone upon the platform. Then I turned, and as I slowly retraced my steps into town an aching sense of emptiness pervaded everything, and the future seemed nothing but impenetrable night.

---

CHAPTER III
THE GREEN SHAWL

I will pass briefly over the days that followed Marsh’s flight. They were concentrated upon efforts to get news of Mrs. Marsh and Melnikoff. There were frequent hold-ups in the street: at two points along the Nevsky Prospect all passengers were stopped to have their documents and any parcels they were carrying examined, but a cursory glance at my passport of the Extraordinary Commission sufficed to satisfy the militiamen’s curiosity.

I studied all the Soviet literature I had time to devour, attended public meetings, and slept in turn at the homes of my new acquaintances, making it a rule, however, never to mention anywhere the secret of other night-haunts.

The meetings I attended were all Communist meetings, at each of which the same banal propagandist phraseology was untiringly reeled off. The vulgar violence of Bolshevist rhetoric and the triumphant inaccuracy of statement due to the prohibition of criticism soon became wearisome. In vain I sought meetings for discussion, or where the people’s point of view would be expressed: freedom of speech granted by the revolution had come to mean freedom for Bolshevist speech only and prison for any other. Some of the meetings, however, were interesting, especially when a prominent leader such as Trotzky, Zinoviev, or Lunacharsky spoke, for the unrivalled powers of speech of a few of the leading Bolsheviks, who possess in a marked degree “the fatal gift of eloquence,” had an almost irresistible attraction.

During these days also I cultivated the friendship of the ex-Journalist, whom, despite his timidity, I found to be a man of taste and culture. He had an extensive library in several languages, and spent his leisure hours writing (if I remember rightly) a treatise on philosophy, which, for some reason or other, he was convinced would be regarded as “counter-revolutionary” and kept locked up and hidden under a lot of books in a closet. I tried to persuade him of the contrary and urged him even to take his manuscript to the department of education, in the hope that someone of the less virulent type there might be impressed with the work and obtain for him concessions as regards leisure and rations.

When I visited him the day after Marsh’s flight I found him, still wrapped in his green coat, running feverishly from stove to stove poking and coaxing the newly lit fires. He was chuckling with glee at the return of forgotten warmth and, in truly Russian style, had lit every stove in his flat and was wasting fuel as fast as he possibly could.

“What the devil is the use of that?” I said in disgust. “Where the deuce do you think you will get your next lot of wood from? It doesn’t rain wood in these regions, does it?”

But my sarcasm was lost on Dmitri Konstantinovitch, in whose system of economy, economy had no place. To his intense indignation I opened all the grates and, dragging out the half-burnt logs and glowing cinders, concentrated them in one big blaze in the dining-room stove, which also heated his bedroom.

The Author, Disguised

“That’s just like an Englishman,” he said in unspeakable disgust as he shuffled round watching me at work. “You understand,” I said, resolutely, “this and the kitchen are the only stoves that are ever to be heated.”

Of course I found his larder empty and he had no prospect of food except the scanty and unappetizing dinner at four o’clock at the local communal eating-house two doors away. So, the weather being fine, I took him out to the little private dining-room where I had eaten on the day of my arrival. Here I gave him the biggest meal that miniature establishment could provide, and intoxicated by the unaccustomed fumes of gruel, carrots, and coffee he forgot—and forgave me—the stoves.

A day or two later the Journalist was sufficiently well to return to work, and taking the spare key of his flat I let myself in whenever I liked. I took him severely to task in his household affairs, and as the result of our concerted labours we saved his untidy home from degenerating completely into a pig-sty. Here I met some of the people mentioned by Marsh. The Journalist was very loth to invite them, but in a week or so I had so firm a hold over him that by the mere hint of not returning any more I could reduce him to complete submission. If I disappeared for as much as three days he was overcome with anxiety.

Some people I met embarrassed me not a little by regarding me as a herald of the approaching Allies and an earnest of the early triumph of the militarist counter-revolution. Their attitude resembled at the other extreme that recently adopted by the Bolshevist Government toward impartial foreign labour delegates, who were embarrassingly proclaimed to be forerunners of the world revolution.

One evening the Journalist greeted me with looks of deep cunning and mystification. I could see he had something on his mind he was bursting to say. When at last we were seated, as usual huddled over the dining-room stove, he leaned over toward my chair, tapped me on the knee to draw my very particular attention, and began.

“Michael Mihailovitch,” he said in an undertone, as though the chairs and table might betray the secret, “I have a won-der-ful idea!” He struck one side of his thin nose with his forefinger to indicate the wondrousness of his idea. “To-day I and some colleagues of former days,” he went on, his finger still applied to the side of his nose, “determined to start a newspaper. Yes, yes, a secret newspaper—to prepare the way for the Allies!”

“And who is going to print it?” I asked, fully impressed with the wondrousness of his idea.

“The Bolshevist Izvestia,” he said, “is printed on the presses of the Novoye Vremya,[2] but all the printer-men being strongly against the Bolsheviks, we will ask them to print a leaflet on the sly.”

“And who will pay for it?” I asked, amused by his simplicity.

“Well, here you can help, Michael Mihailovitch,” said the Journalist, rather as though he were conferring an honour upon me. “You would not refuse, would you? Last summer the English——”

“Well, apart from technique,” I interrupted, “why are you so certain of the Allies?”

Dmitri Konstantinovitch stared at me.

“But you——” he began, then stopped abruptly.

There followed one of those pauses that are more eloquent than speech.

“I see,” I said at last. “Listen, Dmitri Konstantinovitch, I will tell you a story. In the north of your vast country there is a town called Archangel. I was there in the summer and I was there again recently. When I was there in the summer the entire population was crying passionately for the Allies to intervene and save them from a Bolshevist hooligan clique, and when at last the city was occupied the path of the British general was strewn with flowers as he stepped ashore. But when I returned some weeks after the occupation, did I find jubilation and contentment, do you think? I am sorry to say I did not. I found strife, intrigue, and growing bitterness.

“A democratic government was nominally in power with the venerable revolutionist Tchaikovsky, protégé of the Allies, at its head. Well, one night a group of officers—Russian officers—summarily arrested this government established by the Allies, while the allied military leaders slyly shut one eye so as not to see what was going on. The hapless democratic ministers were dragged out of their beds, whisked away by automobile to a waiting steam launch, and carried off to a remote island in the White Sea, where they were unceremoniously deposited and left! Sounds like an exploit of Captain Kidd, doesn’t it? Only two escaped, because they happened that evening to be dining with the American Ambassador, and he concealed them in his bedroom.

“Next morning the city was startled by a sensational announcement posted on the walls. ‘By order of the Russian Command,’ it ran, ‘the incompetent government has been deposed, and the supreme power in North Russia is henceforth vested exclusively in the hands of the military commander of the occupying forces.’

“There was a hell of a hubbub, I can tell you! For who was to untangle the knot? The allied military had connived at the kidnapping by Russian plotters of a Russian government established by order of the Allies! The diplomats and the military were already at loggerheads and now they were like fighting-cocks! Finally, after two days’ wrangling, and when all the factories went on strike, it was decided that the whole proceeding had been most unseemly and undemocratic. ‘Diplomacy’ triumphed, a cruiser was despatched to pick up the wretched ministers shivering on the remote White Sea island, and brought them back (scarcely a triumphal procession!) to Archangel, where they were restored to the tarnished dignity of their ministerial pedestals, and went on trying to pretend to be a government.”

The Journalist gaped open-mouthed as I told him this story. “And what is happening there now?” he asked after a pause. “I am rather afraid to think of what is happening now,” I replied.

“And you mean,” he said, slowly, “the Allies are not——?”

“I do not know—they may come, and they may not.” I realized I was rudely tearing down a radiant castle the poor Journalist had built in the air.

“By why—Michael Mihailovitch—are you——?”

“Why am I here?” I said, completing his unfinished question. “Simply because I wanted to be.”

Dmitri Konstantinovitch gasped. “You—wanted to be here?”

“Yes,” I replied, smiling involuntarily at his incredulity. “I wanted to be here and took the first chance that offered itself to come.” If I had told him that after mature consideration I had elected to spend eternity in Gehenna rather than in the felicity of celestial domains I should not have astonished the incredulous Journalist more.

“By the way,” I said rather cruelly, as a possibility occurred to me, “don’t go and blurt that Archangel story everywhere, or you’ll have to explain how you heard it.”

But he did not heed me. I had utterly demolished his castle of hope. I felt very sorry as I watched him. “Maybe they will learn,” I added, wishing to say something kind, “and not repeat mistakes elsewhere.”

Learn? As I looked into the Journalist’s tear-dimmed eyes, how heartily I wished they would!

---

While the journalist’s home until my arrival was only on the downward grade toward pig-stydom, that of the Policeman had already long since arrived at the thirty-third degree. His rooms were in an abominable condition, and quite unnecessarily so. The sanitary arrangements in many houses were in a sad state of dilapidation, but people took urgent measures to maintain what cleanliness they could. Not so the Policeman, who lived in conditions too loathsome for words and took no steps to check the progressive accumulation of dust, dirt, and filth.

He kept a Chinese servant, who appeared to be permanently on strike, and whom he would alternately caressingly wheedle and tempestuously upbraid, so far as I could see with equal ineffect. In the nether regions of the house he occupied there lived, or frequently gathered, a bevy of Chinamen who loafed about the hall or peeped through gratings up the cellar stairways. There was also a mysterious lady, whom I never saw, but whom I would hear occasionally as I mounted the stairs, shrieking in an hysterical caterwaul, and apparently menacing the little Policeman with physical assault. Sometimes he would snarl back, and one such scène d’amour was terminated by a violent crash of crockery. But the affable female, whom I somehow figured as big and muscular with wild, floating hair, a sort of Medusa, had always vanished by the time I reached the top of the stairs, and the loud door-slam that coincided with her disappearance was followed by death-like silence. The little Policeman, whose bearing was always apologetic, would accost me as though nothing were amiss, while the insubordinate Chinese servant, if he condescended to open the front door, would stand at the foot of the staircase with an enigmatical sneering grin spread over his evil features. It was altogether an uncanny abode.

Marsh had prepared the way, and the Policeman received me with profuse demonstrations of regard. I was fortunately not obliged to accept his proffered hospitality often, but when I did, it was touching to note how he would put himself out in the effort to make me as comfortable as the revolting circumstances would permit. Despite his despicable character, his cringing deceitfulness, and mealy-mouthed flattery, he still possessed human feelings, showed at times a genuine desire to please not merely for the sake of gain, and was sincerely and passionately fond of his children, who lived in another house.

He was excessively vain and boastful. In the course of his career he had accumulated a collection of signed photographs of notables, and loved to demonstrate them, reiterating for the fiftieth time how Count Witte said this, Stolypin said that, and So-and-so said something else. I used to humour him, listening gravely, and he interpreted my endurance as ability to venerate the great ones of the earth, and an appreciation of his illustrious connections, and was mightily pleased. He was full of grandiose schemes for the downthrow of the Red régime, and the least sign of so much as patience with his suggestions excited his enthusiasm and inspired his genius for self-praise and loquacity.

“Your predecessors, if you will allow me to say so,” he launched forth on the occasion of my first visit, “were pitifully incompetent. Even Mr. Marsh, delightful man though he was, hardly knew his business. Now you, Michael Ivanitch, I can see, are a man of understanding—a man of quite different stamp. I presented a scheme to Marsh, for instance,” and he bent over confidentially, “for dividing Petrograd into ten sections, seizing each one in turn, and thus throwing the Bolsheviks out. It was sure of success, and yet Mr. Marsh would not hear of it.”

“How were you going to do it?”

He seized a sheet of paper and began hastily making sketches to illustrate his wonderful scheme. The capital was all neatly divided up, the chiefs of each district were appointed to their respective posts, he had the whole police force at his beck and call and about half-a-dozen regiments.

“Give but the signal,” he cried, dramatically, “and this city of Peter the Great is ours.”

“And the supreme commander?” I queried. “Who will be governor of the liberated city?”

The sanguine little Policeman smiled a trifle confusedly. “Oh, we will find a governor,” he said, rather sheepishly, hesitant to utter the innermost hopes of his heart. “Perhaps you, Michael Ivanitch——”

But this magnanimous offer was mere formal courtesy. It was plain that I was expected to content myself with the secondary rôle of king-maker.

“Well, if all is so far ready,” I said, “why don’t you blow the trumpets and we will watch the walls of Jericho fall?”

The little man twirled his moustache, smirking apologetically. “But, Michael Ivanitch,” he said, growing bold and bordering even on familiarity, “er—funds, don’t you know—after all, nowadays, you know, you get nowhere without—er—money, do you? Of course, you quite understand, Michael Ivanitch, that I, personally——”

“How much did you tell Marsh it would cost?” I interrupted, very curious to see what he would say. He had not expected the question to be put in this way. Like a clock ticking I could hear his mind calculating the probability of Marsh’s having told me the sum, and whether he might safely double it in view of my greater susceptibility.

“I think with 100,000 roubles we might pull it off,” he replied, tentatively, eyeing me cautiously to see how I took it. I nodded silently. “Of course, we might do it for a little less,” he added as if by afterthought, “but then there would be subsequent expenses.”

“Well, well,” I replied, indulgently, “we will see. We’ll talk about it again some time.”

“There is no time like the present, Michael Ivanitch.”

“But there are other things to think of. We will speak of it again when——”

“When——?”

“When you have got Mrs. Marsh out of prison.”

The little man appeared completely to shrivel up when thus dragged brusquely back into the world of crude reality. He flushed for a moment, it seemed to me, with anger, but pulled himself together at once and reassumed his original manner of demonstrative servility.

“At present we have business on hand, Alexei Fomitch,” I added, “and I wish to talk first about that. How do matters stand?”

The Policeman said his agents were busily at work, studying the ground and the possibilities of Mrs. Marsh’s escape. The whole town, he stated, was being searched for Marsh, and the inability to unearth him had already given rise to the suspicion that he had fled. In a day or two the news would be confirmed by Bolshevist agents in Finland. He foresaw an alleviation of Mrs. Marsh’s lot owing to the probable cessation of cross-examinations. It only remained to see whether she would be transferred to another cell or prison, and then plans for escape might be laid.

“Fire ahead,” I said in conclusion. “And when Mrs. Marsh is free—we will perhaps discuss other matters.”

“There is no time like the present, Michael Ivanitch,” repeated the little Policeman, but his voice sounded forlorn.

---

Meanwhile, what of Melnikoff?

Zorinsky was all excitement when I called him up.

“How is your brother?” I said over the ‘phone. “Was the accident serious? Is there any hope of recovery?”

“Yes, yes,” came the reply. “The doctor says he fears he will be in hospital some time, but the chances are he will get over it.”

“Where has he been put?”

“He is now in a private sanitarium in Goróhovaya Street, but we hope he will be removed to some larger and more comfortable hospital.”

“The conditions, I hope, are good?”

“As good as we can arrange for under present-day circumstances. For the time being he is in a separate room and on limited diet. But can you not come round this evening, Pavel Ivanitch?”

“Thank you; I am afraid I have a meeting of our house committee to attend, but I could come to-morrow.”

“Good. Come to-morrow. I have news of Leo, who is coming to Petrograd.”

“My regards to Elena Ivanovna.”

“Thanks. Good-bye.”

“Good-bye.”

The telephone was an inestimable boon, but one that had to be employed with extreme caution. From time to time at moments of panic the Government would completely stop the telephone service, causing immense inconvenience and exasperating the population whom they were trying to placate. But it was not in Bolshevist interests to suppress it entirely, the telephone being an effectual means of detecting “counter-revolutionary” machinations. The lines were closely watched, a suspicious voice or phrase would lead to a line being “tapped,” the recorded conversations would be scrutinized for hints of persons or addresses, and then the Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold to seize books, papers, and documents, and augment the number of occupants of Goróhovayan cells. So one either spoke in fluent metaphor or by prearranged verbal signals camouflaged behind talk of the weather or food. The “news of Leo,” for instance, I understood at once to mean news of Trotzky, or information regarding the Red army.

Zorinsky was enthusiastic when I called next day and stayed to dinner. “We’ll have Melnikoff out in no time,” he exclaimed. “They are holding his case over for further evidence. He will be taken either to the Shpalernaya or Deriabinskaya prison, where we shall be allowed to send him food. Then we’ll communicate by hiding notes in the food and let him know our plan of escape. Meanwhile, all’s well with ourselves, so come and have a glass of vodka.”

I was overjoyed at this good news. The conditions at either of the two prisons he mentioned were much better than at No. 2 Goróhovaya, and though transference to them meant delay in decision and consequent prolongation of imprisonment, the prison régime was generally regarded as more lenient.

“By the way,” said Zorinsky, “it is lucky you have come to-day. A certain Colonel H. is coming in this evening. He works on the General Staff and has interesting news. Trotzky is planning to come up to Petrograd.”

Elena Ivanovna was in a bad mood because a lot of sugar that had been promised to her and her colleagues had failed to arrive and she had been unable to make cakes for two days.

“You must excuse the bad dinner to-night, Pavel Ivanitch,” she said. “I had intended to have chocolate pudding for you, but as it is there will be no third course. Really, the way we are treated is outrageous.”

“Your health, Pavel Ivanitch,” said Zorinsky, undismayed by the prospect of no third course. “Here we have something better even than chocolate pudding, haven’t we?”

He talked on volubly in his usual strain, harping back again to pre-war days and the pleasures of regimental life. I asked him if he thought most of the officers were still monarchists.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I expect you’ll find they are pretty evenly divided. Very few are socialists, but a lot think themselves republicans. Some, of course, are monarchists, and many are nothing at all. As for me,” he continued, “when I joined my regiment I took the oath of allegiance to the Tsar.” (At the mention of the Tsar he stood upright and then sat down again, a gesture which astonished me, for it really seemed to be spontaneous and unfeigned.) “But I consider myself absolved and free to serve whom I will from the moment the Tsar signed the deed of abdication. At present I serve nobody. I will not serve Trotzky, but I will work with him if he offers a career. That is, if the Allies do not come into Petrograd. By the way,” he added, checking himself abruptly and obviously desirous of knowing, “do you think the Allies really will come—the English, for instance?”

“I have no idea.”

“Strange. Everyone here is sure of it. But that means nothing, of course. Listen in the queues or market places. Now Cronstadt has been taken, now the Allies are in Finland, and so on. Personally, I believe they will bungle everything. Nobody really understands Russia, not even we ourselves. Except, perhaps, Trotzky,” he added as an afterthought, “or the Germans.”

“The Germans, you think?”

“Surely. Prussianism is what we want. You see these fat-faced commissars in leathern jackets with three or four revolvers in their belts? or the sailors with gold watch-chains and rings, with their prostitutes promenading the Nevsky? Those rascals, I tell you, will be working inside of a year, working like hell, because if the Whites get here every commissar will be hanged, drawn and quartered. Somebody must work to keep things going. Mark my words, first the Bolsheviks will make their Communists work, they’ll give them all sorts of privileges and power, and then they’ll make the Communists make the others work. Forward the whip and knout! The good old times again! And if you don’t like it, kindly step this way to No. 2 Goróhovaya! Ugh!” he shuddered. “No. 2 Goróhovaya! Here’s to you, Pavel Ivanitch!”

Zorinsky drank heavily, but the liquor produced no visible effect on him.

“By the way,” he asked, abruptly, “you haven’t heard anything of Marsh, have you?”

“Oh, yes,” I said, “he is in Finland.”

“What!” he cried, half rising from the table. He was livid.

“In Finland,” I repeated, regarding him with astonishment. “He got away the day before yesterday.”

“He got away—ha! ha! ha!” Zorinsky dropped back into his seat. His momentary expression changed as suddenly as it had appeared, and he burst into uproarious laughter. “Do you really mean to say so? Ha! ha! My God, won’t they be wild! Damned clever! Don’t you know they’ve been turning the place upside down to find him? Ha, ha, ha! Now that really is good news, upon my soul!”

“Why should you be so glad about it?” I inquired. “You seemed at first to——”

“I was astounded.” He spoke rapidly and a little excitedly. “Don’t you know Marsh was regarded as chief of allied organizations and a most dangerous man? But for some reason they were dead certain of catching him—dead certain. Haven’t they got his wife, or his mother, or somebody, as hostage?”

“His wife.”

“It’ll go badly with her,” he laughed cruelly.

It was my turn to be startled. “What do you mean?” I said, striving to appear indifferent.

“They will shoot her.”

It was with difficulty that I maintained a tone of mere casual interest. “Do you really think they will shoot her?” I said, incredulously.

“Sure to,” he replied, emphatically. “What else do they take hostages for?”

For the rest of the evening I thought of nothing else but the possibility of Mrs. Marsh being shot. The Policeman had said the direct opposite, basing his statement on what he said was inside information. On the other hand, why on earth should hostages be taken if they were to be liberated when the culprits had fled? I could elicit nothing more from Zorinsky except that in his opinion Mrs. Marsh might be kept in prison a month or two, but in the long run would most undoubtedly be shot.

I listened but idly to the colonel, a pompous gentleman with a bushy white beard, who came in after dinner. Zorinsky told him he might speak freely in my presence and, sitting bolt upright, he conversed in a rather ponderous manner on the latest developments. He appeared to have a high opinion of Zorinsky. He confirmed the latter’s statements regarding radical changes in the organization of the army, and said Trotzky was planning to establish a similar new régime in the Baltic Fleet. I was not nearly so attentive as I ought to have been, and had to ask the colonel to repeat it all to me at our next meeting.

---

Maria was the only person I took into my confidence as to all my movements. Every morning I banged at the chalk-marked door. Maria let me in and I told her how things were going with Mrs. Marsh. Of course, I always gave her optimistic reports. Then I would say, “To-night, Maria, I am staying at the Journalist’s—you know his address—to-morrow at Stepanovna’s, Friday night at Zorinsky’s, and Saturday, here. So if anything happens you will know where it probably occurred. If I disappear, wait a couple of days, and then get someone over the frontier—perhaps the coachman will go—and tell the British Consul.” Then I would give her my notes, written in minute handwriting on tracing paper, and she would hide them for me. Two more Englishmen left by Marsh’s route a few days after his departure and Maria gave them another small packet to carry, saying it was a letter from herself to Marsh. So it was, only on the same sheet as she had scrawled a pencil note to Marsh I wrote a long message in invisible ink. I made the ink by—oh, it doesn’t matter how.

Zorinsky’s reports as to Melnikoff continued to be favourable. He hinted at a certain investigator who might have to be bought off, to which I gave eager assent. He gave me further information on political matters which proved to be quite accurate, and repellent though his bearing and appearance were, I began to feel less distrustful of him. It was about a week later, when I called him up, that he told me “the doctors had decided his brother was sufficiently well to leave hospital.” Tingling with excitement and expectation I hurried round.

“The investigator is our man,” explained Zorinsky, “and guarantees to let Melnikoff out within a month.”

“How will he do it?” I inquired.

“That rather depends. He may twist the evidence, but Melnikoff’s is a bad case and there’s not much evidence that isn’t damaging. If that’s too hard, he may swap Melnikoff’s dossier for somebody else’s and let the error be found out when it’s too late. But he’ll manage it all right.”

“And it must take a whole month?”

“Melnikoff will be freed about the middle of January. There’s no doubt about it. And the investigator wants 60,000 roubles.”

“Sixty thousand roubles!” I gasped. I was appalled at this unexpected figure. Where should I get the money from? The rouble was still worth about forty to the pound, so that this was some £1,500.

“Melnikoff’s case is a hopeless one,” said Zorinsky, dryly. “No one can let him off and go scot-free. The investigator wants to be guaranteed, for he will have to get over the frontier the same night, too. But I advise you to pay only half now, and the rest the day Melnikoff gets out. There will also be a few odd bribes to accomplices. Better allow 75,000 or 80,000 roubles all told.”

“I have very little money with me just now,” I said, “but I will try to get you the first 30,000 in two or three days.”

“And by the way,” he added, “I forgot to tell you last time you were here that I have seen Melnikoff’s sister, who is in the direst straits. Elena Ivanovna and I have sent her a little food, but she also needs money. We have no money, for we scarcely use it nowadays, but perhaps you could spare a thousand or so now and again.”

“I will give you some for her when I bring the other.”

“Thank you. She will be grateful. And now, unpleasant business over, let’s go and have a glass of vodka. Your health, Pavel Ivanitch.”

Rejoicing at the prospect of securing Melnikoff’s release, and burdened at the same time with the problem of procuring this large sum of money, I rang up next day the business friend of whom Marsh had spoken, using a pre-arranged password. Marsh called this gentleman the “Banker,” though that was not his profession, because he had left his finances in his charge. When I visited him I found him to be a man of agreeable though nervous deportment, very devoted to Marsh. He was unable to supply me with all the money I required, and I decided I must somehow get the rest from Finland, perhaps when I took Mrs. Marsh away.

The “Banker” had just returned from Moscow, whither he had been called with an invitation to accept a post in a new department created to check the ruin of industry. He was very sarcastic over the manner in which, he said, the “government of horny hands” (as the Bolsheviks frequently designate themselves) was beginning “to grovel before people who can read and write.” “In public speeches,” said the Banker, “they still have to call us ‘bourzhu (bourgeois) swine’ for the sake of appearances, but in private, when the doors are closed, it is very different. They have even ceased ‘comrading’: it is no longer ‘Comrade A.’ or ‘Comrade B.’ when they address us—that honour they reserve for themselves—but ‘Excuse me, Alexander Vladimirovitch,’ or ‘May I trouble you, Boris Konstantinovitch?’” He laughed ironically. “Quite ‘pogentlemensky,’” he added, using a Russianized expression whose meaning is obvious.

“Did you accept the post?” I asked.

“I? No, sir!” he replied with emphasis. “Do I want a dirty workman holding a revolver over me all day? That is the sort of ‘control’ they intend to exercise.” (He did accept it, however, just a month later, when the offer was renewed with the promise of a tidy salary if he took it, and prison if he didn’t.)

On the following day I brought the money to Zorinsky, and he said he would have it transferred to the investigator at once.

“By the way,” I said, “I may be going to Finland for a few days. Do not be surprised if you do not hear from me for a week or so.”

“To Finland?” Zorinsky was very interested. “Then perhaps you will not return?”

“I am certain to return,” I said, “even if only on account of Melnikoff.”

“And of course you have other business here,” he said. “By the way, how are you going?”

“I don’t know yet; they say it is easy enough to walk over the frontier.”

“Not quite so easy,” he replied. “Why not just walk across the bridge?”

“What bridge?”

“The frontier bridge at Bielo’ostrof.”

I thought he was mad. “What on earth do you mean?” I asked.

“It can be fixed up all right—with a little care,” he went on. “Five or six thousand roubles to the station commissar and he’ll shut his eyes, another thousand or so to the bridge sentry and he’ll look the other way, and over you go. Evening is the best time, when it’s dark.”

I remembered I had heard speak of this method in Finland. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. It was the simplest thing in the world, but it wasn’t sure. Commissars were erratic and not unfearful of burning their fingers. Furthermore, the Finns sometimes turned people back. Besides, Mrs. Marsh would be with me—I hoped—and of that Zorinsky must know nothing.

“That is a splendid notion,” I exclaimed. “I had never thought of that. I’ll let you know before I start.”

Next day I told him I had decided not to go to Finland because I was thinking of going to Moscow.

---

“Madame Marsh has not been moved from No. 2 Goróhovaya,” declared the little Policeman as I sat opposite him in his fetid den. “Her case is in abeyance, and will doubtless remain so for some time. Since they learned of Marsh’s flight they have left her alone. They may perhaps forget all about her. Now, I think, is the time to act.”

“What will they do to her if her case comes on again?”

“It is too early yet to conjecture.”

It was shortly before Christmas that the Policeman began to grow nervous and excited, and I could see that his emotion was real. His plan for Mrs. Marsh’s escape was developing, occupying his whole mind and causing him no small concern. Every day I brought him some little present, such as cigarettes, sugar, or butter, procured from Maria, so that he should have fewer household cares to worry over. At last I became almost as wrought up as he was himself, while Maria, whom I kept informed, was in a constant state of tremor resulting from her fever of anxiety.

December 18th dawned bleak and raw. The wind tore in angry gushes round the corners of the houses, snatching up the sandy snow, and flinging it viciously in the half-hidden faces of hurrying, harassed pedestrians. Toward noon the storm abated, and Maria and I set out together for a neighbouring market-place. We were going to buy a woman’s cloak, for that night I was to take Mrs. Marsh across the frontier.

The corner of the Kuznetchny Pereulok and the Vladimirovsky Prospect has been a busy place for “speculators” ever since private trading was prohibited. Even on this bitter winter day there were the usual lines of wretched people standing patiently, disposing of personal belongings or of food got by foraging in the country. Many of them were women of the educated class, selling off their last possessions in the effort to scrape together sufficient to buy meagre provisions for themselves or their families. Either they were unable to find occupation or were here in the intervals of work. Old clothing, odds and ends of every description, crockery, toys, nick-nacks, clocks, books, pictures, paper, pots, pans, pails, pipes, post-cards—the entire paraphernalia of antiquarian and second-hand dealers’ shops—could here be found turned out on to the pavements.

Maria and I passed the people selling sugar by the lump, their little stock of four or five lumps exposed on outstretched palms. We also passed the herrings, and the “bread patties” of greenish colour. Passers-by would pick up a patty, smell it, and if they did not like it, would put it back and try the next. Maria was making for the old clothing, and as we pushed through the crowd we kept eyes and ears open for warning of a possible raid, for from time to time bands of guards would make a sudden dash at the “speculators,” arrest a few unlucky ones, and disperse the rest.

Maria soon found what she wanted—a warm cloak which had evidently seen better days. The tired eyes of the tall, refined lady from whom we bought it opened wide as I immediately paid the first price she asked.

“Je vous remercie, Madame,” I said, and as Maria donned the cloak and we moved away the look of scorn on the lady’s face passed into one of astonishment.

“Don’t fail to have tea ready at five, Maria,” I said as we returned.

“Am I likely to fail, Ivan Ilitch?”

We sat and waited. The minutes were hours, the hours days. At three I said: “I am going now, Maria.” Biting her fingers, Maria stood trembling as I left her and set out to walk across the town.

---

The dingy interior of the headquarters of the Extraordinary Commission, with its bare stairs and passages, is an eerie place at all times of the year, but never is its sombre, sorrow-laden gloom so intense as on a December afternoon when dusk is sinking into darkness. While Maria and I, unable to conceal our agitation, made our preparations, there sat in one of the inner chambers at No. 2 Goróhovaya a group of women, from thirty to forty in number. Their faces were undistinguishable in the growing darkness as they sat in groups on the wooden planks which took the place of bedsteads. The room was over-heated and nauseatingly stuffy, but the patient figures paid no heed, nor appeared to care whether it be hot or cold, dark or light. A few chatted in undertones, but most of them sat motionless and silent, waiting, waiting, endlessly waiting.

The terror-hour had not yet come—it came only at seven each evening. The terror-hour was more terrible in the men’s chambers, where the toll was greater, but it visited the women, too. Then, every victim knew that if the heavy door was opened and his name called, he passed out into eternity. For executions were carried out in the evening and the bodies removed at night.

At seven o’clock, all talk, all action ceased. Faces set, white and still, fixed on the heavy folding-door. When it creaked every figure became a statue, a death-statue, stone-livid, breathless, dead in life. A moment of ghastly, intolerable suspense, a silence that could be felt, and in the silence—a name. And when the name was spoken, every figure—but one—would imperceptibly relapse. Here and there a lip would twitch, here and there a smile would flicker. But no one would break the dead silence. One of their number was doomed.

The figure that bore the spoken name would rise, and move, move slowly with a wooden, unnatural gait, tottering along the narrow aisle between the plank couches. Some would look up and some would look down; some, fascinated, would watch the dead figure pass; and some would pray, or mutter, “To-morrow, maybe, I.” Or there would be a frantic shriek, a brutal struggle, and worse than Death would fill the chamber, till where two were, one only would be left, heaving convulsively, insane, clutching the rough woodwork with bleeding nails.

But the silence was the silence of supreme compassion, the eyes that followed or the eyes that fell were alike those of brothers or sisters, for in death’s hour vanish all differences and there reigns the only true Communism—the Communism of Sympathy. Not there, in the Kremlin, nor there in the lying soviets—but here in the terrible house of inquisition, in the Communist dungeons, is true Communism at last established!

But on this December afternoon the terror-hour was not yet. There were still three hours’ respite, and the figures spoke low in groups or sat silently waiting, waiting, endlessly waiting.

Then suddenly a name was called. “Lydia Marsh!”

The hinges creaked, the guard appeared in the doorway, and the name was spoken loud and clearly. “It is not the terror-hour yet,” thought every woman, glancing at the twilight through the high, dirt-stained windows.

A figure rose from a distant couch. “What can it be?” “Another interrogation?” “An unusual hour!” Low voices sounded from the group. “They’ve left me alone three days,” said the rising figure, wearily. “I suppose now it begins all over again. Well, à bientôt.”

The figure disappeared in the doorway, and the women went on waiting—waiting for seven o’clock.

“Follow me,” said the guard. He moved along the corridor and turned down a side-passage. They passed others in the corridor, but no one heeded. The guard stopped. Looking up, the woman saw she was outside the women’s lavatory. She waited. The guard pointed with his bayonet.

“In here?” queried the figure in surprise. The guard was silent. The woman pushed the door open and entered.

Lying in the corner were a dark green shawl and a shabby hat, with two slips of paper attached. One of them was a pass in an unknown name, stating that the holder had entered the building at four o’clock and must leave before seven. The other had scrawled on it the words: “Walk straight into St. Izaac’s Cathedral.”

Mechanically she destroyed the second slip, adjusted the shabby hat, and wrapping the shawl well round her neck and face passed out into the passage. She elbowed others in the corridor, but no one heeded her. At the foot of the main staircase she was asked for her pass. She showed it and was motioned on. At the main entrance she was again asked for her pass. She showed it and was passed out into the street. She looked up and down. The street was empty, and crossing the road hurriedly she disappeared round the corner.

Like dancing constellations the candles flickered and flared in front of the ikons at the foot of the huge pillars of the vast cathedral. Halfway up the columns vanished in gloom. I had already burned two candles, and though I was concealed in the niche of a pillar, I knelt and stood alternately, partly from impatience, partly that my piety should be patent to any chance observer. But my eyes were fixed on the little wooden side-entrance. How interminable the minutes seemed.

A quarter to five! Then the green shawl appeared. It looked almost black in the dim darkness. It slipped through the doorway quickly, stood still a moment, and moved irresolutely forward. I walked up to the shrouded figure.

“Mrs. Marsh?” I said quietly in English.

“Yes.”

“I am the person you are to meet. I hope you will soon see your husband.”

“Where is he?” she asked, anxiously.

“In Finland. You go there with me to-night.”

We left the cathedral and crossing the square took a cab and drove to the place called Five Corners. Here we walked a little and finding another cab drove near to “No. 5,” again walking the last hundred yards. I banged at the door three times.

How shall I describe the meeting with Maria! I left them weeping together and went into another room. Neither will I attempt to describe the parting, when an hour later Mrs. Marsh stood ready for her journey, clad in the cloak we had purchased in the morning, and with a black shawl in place of the green one.

“There is no time to lose,” I said. “We must be at the station at seven, and it is a long drive.”

The adieus were over at last, and Maria stood weeping at the door as we made our way down the dark stone stairs.

“I will call you Varvara,” I cautioned my companion. “You call me Vania, and if by chance we are stopped, I am taking you to hospital.”

We drove slowly to the distant straggling Okhta station, where lately I had watched the huge figure of Marsh clamber on to the roof and disappear through the window. The little Policeman was on the platform, sincerely overjoyed at this happy ending to his design. I forgot his ways, his dirtiness, his messy quarters, and thanked him heartily, and as I thrust the packet of money Marsh had left for him into his hand, I felt that at this moment, at least, that was not what was uppermost in his thoughts.

“Come on, Varvara!” I shouted in Russian, rudely tugging Mrs. Marsh by the sleeve and dragging her along the platform. “We shan’t get places if you stand gaping like that! Come on, stupid!” I hauled her toward the train, and seeing an extra box-car being hitched on in front, rushed in its direction.

“Gently, gently, Vania!” cried my companion in genuine distress as I lifted her bodily and landed her on the dirty floor.

“Ne zievai!” I cried. “Sadyis! Na, beri mieshotchek! Don’t yawn! Get in! Here, take the bag!” and while I clambered up, I handed her the packet of sandwiches made by Maria for the journey. “If anything happens,” I whispered in English when we were safely ensconced, “we are ’speculators’—looking for milk; that’s what nearly everybody here is doing.”

The compact, seething mass of beings struggling to squirm into the car resembled a swarm of hiving bees, and in a few moments the place was packed like a sardine-box. In vain late arrivals endeavoured, headforemost, to burrow a path inward. In vain some dozens of individuals pleaded to the inmates to squeeze “just a little tighter” and make room “for just one more.” Somehow the doors were slid to, and we sat in the pitch darkness and waited.

Though the car must have held nearly a hundred people, once we were shut in conversation ceased completely; scarcely any one spoke, and if they did it was in undertones. Until the train started, the silence, but for audible breathing, was uncanny. Only a boy, sitting next to my companion, coughed during the whole journey—coughed rackingly and incessantly, nearly driving me mad. After a while a candle was produced, and round the flickering light at one end of the car some Finns began singing folk-songs. A few people tumbled out at wayside stations, and four hours later, when we arrived at Grusino, the car was only three-quarters full.

Railway Travelling in Soviet Russia

It was nearly midnight. A mass of humanity surged from the train and dispersed rapidly into the woods in all directions. I took my companion, as Marsh had directed, along a secluded path in the wrong direction. A few minutes later we turned, and crossing the rails a little above the platform, took the forest track that led to Fita’s house.

Fita was a Finn, the son of a peasant who had been shot by the Bolsheviks for “speculation.” While Fita was always rewarded for his services as guide, his father’s death was a potent incentive to him to do whatever lay in his power to help those who were fleeing from his parent’s murderers. Eventually he was discovered in this occupation, and suffered the same fate as his father, being shot “for conspiring against the proletarian dictatorship.” He was only sixteen years of age, very simple and shy, but courageous and enterprising.

We had an hour to wait at Fita’s cottage, and while Mrs. Marsh lay down to rest I took the boy aside to speak about the journey and question him as to four other people, obviously fugitives like ourselves, whom we found in his house.

“Which route are we going by,” I asked, “north or west?”

“North,” he answered. “It is much longer, but when the weather is good it is not difficult walking and is the safest.”

“You have the best sledge for me?”

“Yes, and the best horse.”

“These other people, who are they?”

“I don’t know. The man is an officer. He came inquiring in these parts three days ago and the peasants directed him to me. I promised to help him.”

Besides the Russian officer, clad in rough working clothes, there was a lady who spoke French, and two pretty girls of about fifteen and seventeen years of age. The girls were dressed rather à la turcque, in brown woollen jerkins and trousers of the same material. They showed no trace of nervousness, and both looked as though they were thoroughly enjoying a jolly adventure. They spoke to the officer in Russian and to the lady in French, and I took it that she was a governess and he an escort.

We drove out from Fita’s cottage at one o’clock. The land through which the Russian frontier passes west of Lake Ladoga is forest and morass, with few habitations. In winter the morass freezes and is covered with deep snow. The next stage of our journey ended at a remote hut five miles from the frontier on the Russian side, the occupant of which, likewise a Finnish peasant, was to conduct us on foot through the woods to the first Finnish village, ten miles beyond. The night was a glorious one. The day’s storm had completely abated. Huge white clouds floated slowly across the full moon, and the air was still. The fifteen-mile sleigh-drive from Fita’s cottage to the peasant’s hut, over hill and dale, by bye-ways and occasionally straight across the marshes when outposts had to be avoided, was one of the most beautiful I have ever experienced—even in Russia.

In a large open clearing of the forest stood three or four rude huts, with tumbledown outhouses, black, silent, and, like a picture to a fairy tale, throwing blue shadows on the dazzling snow. The driver knocked at one of the doors. After much waiting it was opened, and we were admitted by an old peasant and his wife, obviously torn from their slumbers.

We were joined a quarter of an hour later by the other party, exchanging, however, no civilities or signs of recognition. When the peasant had dressed we set out.

Deserting the track almost immediately, we launched into the deep snow across the open ground, making directly for the forest. Progress was retarded by the soft snowdrifts into which our feet sank as high as the knees, and for the sake of the ladies we had to make frequent halts. Winding in and out of the forest, avoiding tracks and skirting open spaces, it seemed an interminable time before we arrived anywhere near the actual frontier line.

Mrs. Marsh and the French lady patched up a chatting acquaintance, and during one of our halts, while the girls were lying outstretched on the snow, I asked her if the French lady had told her who our companions were. But the French lady, it appeared, would not say, until we had actually crossed the frontier.

I was astonished at the manner in which Mrs. Marsh stood the strain of our night adventure. She had been in prison nearly a month, living on the scanty and atrocious prison food, subjected to long, nerve-racking and searching cross-examinations, yet she bore up better than any of the other females in our party, and after rest-halts was always the first to be ready to restart. There were ditches to cross and narrow, rickety bridges to be traversed. Once our guide, laden with parcels, suddenly vanished, sinking completely into an invisible dyke which had filled with drifted snow. He scrambled up the other side all wet from the water into which he had plunged through the thin ice. The snow was so soft that we could find no foothold from which to jump, and it looked as if there were no means of crossing except as our poor guide had done, until the idea occurred to me that if I sprawled on my stomach the snowdrift might not collapse under my weight. So, planting my feet as deeply as I could, I threw myself across, digging with my hands into the other side till I got a grip, and thus forming a bridge. Mrs. Marsh walked tentatively across my back, the drift still held, the others followed. I wriggled over on my stomach, and we all got over dry.

At last we arrived at a dyke about eight or ten feet broad, filled with water and only partially frozen over. A square white-and-black post on its bank showed that we were at the frontier. “The outposts are a mile away on either hand,” whispered our peasant-guide. “We must get across as quickly as possible.”

The dyke lay across a clearing in the forest. We walked along it, looking wistfully at the other bank ten feet away, and searching for the bridge our guide said should be somewhere here. All at once a black figure emerged from the trees a hundred yards behind us. We stood stock-still, expecting others to appear, and ready, if attacked, to jump into the dyke and reach the other bank at all costs. Our guide was the most terrified of the party, but the black figure turned out to be only a peasant acquaintance of his from another village, who told us there was a bridge at the other end of the clearing.

The “bridge” we found to be a rickety plank, ice-covered and slippery, that threatened to give way as each one of us stepped on to it. One by one we crossed it, expecting it every moment to collapse, till at last we stood in a little group on the farther side.

“This is Finland,” observed our guide, laconically, “that is the last you will see of Sovdepia.” He used an ironical popular term for Soviet Russia constructed from the first syllables of the words Soviets of Deputies.

The moment they set foot on Finnish soil the two girls crossed themselves devoutly and fell on their knees. Then we moved up to a fallen tree-trunk some distance away and sat down to eat sandwiches.

“It’s all right for you,” the peasant went on, suddenly beginning to talk. “You’re out of it, but I’ve got to go back.” He had scarcely said a word the whole time, but once out of Russia, even though “Sovdepia” was but a few yards distant, he felt he could say what he liked. And he did. But most of the party paid but little attention to his complaints against the hated “Kommuna.” That was now all behind.

It was easy work from thence onward. There was another long walk through deep snow, but we could lie down as often as we pleased without fear of discovery by Red patrols. We should only have to report to the nearest Finnish authorities and ask for an escort until we were identified. We all talked freely now—no longer in nervous whispers—and everyone had some joke to tell that made everybody else laugh. At one of our halts Mrs. Marsh whispered in my ear, “They are the daughters of the Grand Duke Paul Alexandrovitch, the Tsar’s uncle, who was imprisoned the other day.”

The girls were his daughters by a morganatic marriage. I thought little of them at the time, except that they were both very pretty and very tastefully dressed in their sporting costumes. But I was reminded of them a few weeks later when I was back in Petrograd. Without trial, their father was shot one night in the fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul, and his body, together with other near relatives of the murdered Tsar, was thrown into a common and unmarked grave.

The incident did not impress me as it did some, for in the revolutionary tornado those of high estate pass like chaff before the wind. I could not but feel more for the hundreds less known and less fortunate who were unable to flee and escape the cruel scythe of revolution. Still, I was glad the young girls I had travelled with were no longer in the place called Sovdepia. How, I wondered, would they learn of the grim tragedy of the gloomy fortress? Who would tell them? To whom would fall the bitter lot to say: “Your father was shot for bearing the name he bore—shot, not in fair fight, but like a dog, by a gang of Letts and Chinese hirelings, and his body lies none knows where”? And I was glad it was not I.

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CHAPTER IV
MESHES

“Why, yes, Maria!” I exclaimed, “the way Mrs. Marsh bore up was just wonderful to see! Twelve miles in deep snow, heavy marching through thickets and scrub, over ditches and dykes, stumps and pitfalls, with never a word of complaint, as though it were a picnic! You’d never have dreamt she was just out of prison.”

“Yes, of course,” said Maria, proudly, “that would be just like her. And where is she now, Ivan Ilitch?”

“On the way to England, I guess.”

I was back again in Red Petrograd after a brief stay in Finland. That little country was supposed to be the headquarters of the Russian counter-revolution, which meant that everyone who had a plan to overthrow the Bolsheviks (and there were almost as many plans as there were patriots) conspired with as much noise as possible to push it through to the detriment of everybody else’s. So tongues wagged fast and viciously, and any old cock-and-bull story about anybody else was readily believed, circulated, and shouted abroad. You got it published if you could, and if you couldn’t (the papers, after all, had to draw the line somewhere), then you printed it yourself in the form of a libellous pamphlet. I felt a good deal safer in Petrograd, where I was thrown entirely on my own resources, than in Helsingfors, where the appearance of a stranger in a café or restaurant in almost anybody’s company was sufficient to set the puppets of a rival faction in commotion, like an ant-nest when a stone is dropped on it.

So I hid, stayed at a room in a private house, bought my own food or frequented insignificant restaurants, and was glad when I was given some money for expenses and could return to my friends Maria, Stepanovna, the Journalist, and others in Petrograd.

“How did you get back here, Ivan Ilitch?”

“Same old way, Maria. Black night. Frozen river. Deep snow. Everything around—bushes, trees, meadows—still and grey-blue in the starlight. Finnish patrols kept guard as before—lent me a white sheet, too, to wrap myself up in. Sort of cloak of invisibility, like in the fairy tales. So while the Finns watched through the bushes, I shuffled across the river, looking like Cæsar’s ghost.”

Maria was fascinated. “And did nobody see you?”

“Nobody, Maria. To make a good story I should have knocked at the door of the Red patrol and announced myself as the spirit of His Late Imperial Majesty, returned to wreak vengeance, shouldn’t I? But I didn’t. Instead of that I threw away the sheet and took a ticket to Petrograd. Very prosaic, wasn’t it? I’ll have some more tea, please.”

I found a new atmosphere developing in the city which is proudly entitled the “Metropolis of the World Revolution.” Simultaneously with the increasing shortage of food and fuel and the growing embitterment of the masses, new tendencies were observable on the part of the ruling Communist Party. Roughly, these tendencies might be classed as political or administrative, social, and militarist.

Politically, the Communist Party was being driven in view of popular discontent to tighten its control by every means on all branches of administrative activity in the country. Thus the people’s co-operative societies and trade unions were gradually being deprived of their liberties and independence, and the “boss” system under Communist bosses was being introduced. At the same time elections had to be strictly “controlled,” that is, manipulated in such a way that only Communists got elected.

As an off-set to this, it was evident the Communists were beginning to realize that political “soundness” (that is, public confession of the Communist creed) was a bad substitute for administrative ability. The premium on ignorance was being replaced by a premium on intelligence and training, and bourgeois “specialists” of every calling, subject to rigid Communist control, were being encouraged to resume their avocations or accept posts with remunerative pay under the Soviet Government. Only two conditions were required, namely, that the individual renounce all claim to former property and all participation in politics. These overtures were made particularly to members of the liberal professions, doctors, nurses, matrons, teachers, actors, and artists, but also to industrial and commercial experts, and even landlords who were trained agriculturists. Thus was established a compromise with the bourgeoisie.

No people in the world are so capable of heroic and self-sacrificing labour for purely altruistic motives as a certain type of Russian. I remember in the summer of 1918, when the persecution of the intelligentsia was at its height, drawing attention in an official report to the remarkable fact of the large number of educated Russians who had heroically stuck to their posts and were struggling in the face of adversity to save at least something from the general wreck. Such individuals might be found at times even within the ranks of “the party,” but they cared little for the silly politics of Bolshevism and nothing whatever for the world revolution. Credit is due to the Communists at least to this extent, that they realized ultimately the value of such service to humanity, and, when they discovered it, encouraged it, especially if the credit for it accrued to themselves. The work done by heroic individuals of this type served largely to counterbalance the psychological effect of ever-increasing political and industrial slavery, and it has therefore been denounced as “treacherous” by some counter-revolutionary émigrés, and especially by those in whose eyes the alleviation of the bitter lot of the Russian people was a minor detail compared with the restoration of themselves to power.

The third growing tendency, the militarist, was the most interesting, and, incidentally, to me the most embarrassing. The stimulus to build a mighty Red army for world-revolutionary purposes was accentuated by the pressing need of mobilizing forces to beat off the counter-revolutionary, or “White,” armies gathering on the outskirts of Russia, particularly in the south and east. The call for volunteers was a complete failure from the start, except in so far as people joined the Red army with the object of getting bigger rations until being sent to the front, and then deserting at the first opportunity. So mobilization orders increased in frequency and stringency and until I got some settled occupation I had to invent expedients to keep my passport papers up to date.

My friends, the Finnish patrols, had furnished me with a renewed document better worded than the last and with a later date, so I left the old one in Finland and now keep it as a treasured relic. As a precautionary measure I changed my name to Joseph Krylenko. But the time was coming when even those employees of the Extraordinary Commission who were not indispensable might be subject to mobilization. The Tsarist police agents, of course, and Chinese and other foreign hirelings, who eavesdropped and spied in the factories and public places, were indispensable, but the staff of clerical employees, one of whom I purported to be, might be cut down. So I had somehow to get a document showing I was exempt from military service.

It was Zorinsky who helped me out. I called him up the day after my return, eager to have news of Melnikoff. He asked me to come round to dinner and I deliberated with myself whether, having told him I expected to go to Moscow, I should let him know I had been to Finland. I decided to avoid the subject and say nothing at all.

Zorinsky greeted me warmly. So did his wife. As we seated ourselves at the dinner-table I noticed there was still no lack of good food, though Elena Ivanovna, of course, complained.

“Your health, Pavel Ivanitch,” exclaimed Zorinsky as usual; “glad to see you back. How are things over there?”

“Over where?” I queried.

“Why, in Finland, of course.”

So he knew already! It was a good thing for me that I had devoted a deal of thought to the enigmatical personality of my companion. I could not make him out. Personally, I disliked him intensely, yet he had already been of considerable service and in any case I needed his assistance to effect Melnikoff’s release. On one occasion he had mentioned, in passing, that he knew Melnikoff’s friend Ivan Sergeievitch, so it had been my intention to question the latter on the subject while in Finland, but he was away and I had seen no one else to ask. The upshot of my deliberations was that I resolved to cultivate Zorinsky’s acquaintance for my own ends, but until I knew him better never to betray any true feelings of surprise, fear, or satisfaction.

Disconcerted, therefore, as I was by his knowledge of my movements, I managed to divert my undeniable confusion into an expression of disgust.

“Rotten,” I replied with a good deal of emphasis, and, incidentally, of truth. “Absolutely rotten. If people here think Finland is going to do anything against the Bolsheviks they are mistaken. I never in my life saw such a mess-up of factions and feuds.”

“But is there plenty to eat there?” put in Elena Ivanovna, this being the sole subject that interested her.

“Oh, yes, there is plenty to eat,” and to her delight and envy I detailed a comprehensive list of delicacies unobtainable in Russia, even by the theatrical world.

“It is a pity you did not let me put you across the bridge at Bielo’ostrof,” observed Zorinsky, referring to his offer to assist me in getting across the frontier.

“Oh, it was all right,” I said. “I had to leave at a moment’s notice. It was a long and difficult walk, but not unpleasant.”

“I could have put you across quite simply,” he said, “—both of you.”

“Who, ‘both of us’?”

“Why, you and Mrs. Marsh, of course.”

Phew! So he knew that, too!

“You seem to know a lot of things,” I remarked, as casually as I could.

“It is my hobby,” he replied, with his crooked, cynical smile. “You are to be congratulated, I must say, on Mrs. Marsh’s escape. It was, I believe, very neatly executed. You didn’t do it yourself, I suppose?”

“No,” I said, “and, to tell the truth, I have no idea how it was done.” I was prepared to swear by all the gods that I knew nothing of the affair.

“Nor have they any idea at No. 2 Goróhovaya,” he said. “At least, so I am told.” He appeared not to attach importance to the matter. “By the way,” he continued a moment later, “I want to warn you against a fellow I have heard Marsh was in touch with. Alexei—Alexei—what’s his name?—Alexei Fomitch something-or-other—I’ve forgotten the surname.”

The Policeman!

“Ever met him?”

“Never heard of him,” I said, indifferently.

“Look out if you do,” said Zorinsky, “he is a German spy.”

“Any idea where he lives?” I inquired, in the same tone.

“No; he is registered under a pseudonym, of course. But he doesn’t interest me. I chanced to hear of him the other day and thought I would caution you.”

Was it mere coincidence that Zorinsky mentioned the Policeman? I resolved to venture a query.

“Any connection between Mrs. Marsh and this—er—German spy?” I asked, casually.

“Not that I know of.” For a moment a transitory flash appeared in his eyes. “You really think Mrs. Marsh was ignorant of how she escaped?” he added.

“I am positive. She hadn’t the faintest notion.”

Zorinsky was thoughtful. We changed the subject, but after a while he approached it again.

“It is impertinent of me to ask questions,” he said, courteously, “but I cannot help being abstractly interested in your chivalrous rescue of Mrs. Marsh. I scarcely expect you to answer, but I should, indeed, be interested to know how you learned she was free.”

“Why, very simply,” I replied. “I met her quite by chance at a friend’s house and offered to escort her across the frontier.”

Zorinsky collapsed and the subject was not mentioned again. Though it was clear he had somehow established a connection in his mind between the Policeman’s name and that of Mrs. Marsh, my relief was intense to find him now on the wrong tack and apparently indifferent to the subject.

As on the occasion of my first visit to this interesting personage, I became so engrossed in subjects he introduced that I completely forgot Melnikoff, although the latter had been uppermost in my thoughts since I successfully landed Mrs. Marsh in Finland. Nor did the subject recur to mind until Zorinsky himself broached it.

“Well, I have lots of news for you,” he said as we moved into the drawing-room for coffee. “In the first place, Vera Alexandrovna’s café is rounded up and she’s under lock and key.”

He imparted this information in an indifferent tone.

“Are you not sorry for Vera Alexandrovna?” I said.

“Sorry? Why should one be? She was a nice girl, but foolish to keep a place like that, with all those stupid old fogeys babbling aloud like chatterboxes. It was bound to be found out.”

I recalled that this was exactly what I had thought about the place myself.

“What induced you to frequent it?” I asked.

“Oh, just for company,” he replied. “Sometimes one found someone to talk to. Lucky I was not there. The Bolsheviks got quite a haul, I am told, something like twenty people. I just happened to miss, and should have walked right into the trap next day had I not chanced to find out just in time.”

My misgivings, then, regarding Vera’s secret café had been correct, and I was thankful I had fought shy of the place after my one visit. But I felt very sorry for poor Vera Alexandrovna. I was still thinking of her when Zorinsky thrust a big blue sheet of oil paper into my hands.

“What do you think of that?” he asked.

The paper was a pen-sketch of the Finnish Gulf, but for some time I could make neither head nor tail of the geometrical designs which covered it. Only when I read in the corner the words Fortress of Cronstadt, Distribution of Mines, did I realize what the map really was.

“Plan of the minefields around Cronstadt and in the Finnish Gulf,” explained Zorinsky. The mines lay in inner and outer fields and the course was shown which a vessel would have to take to pass through safely. The plan proved subsequently to be quite correct.

“How did you get hold of it?” I asked, interested and amused.

“Does it matter?” he said. “There is generally a way to do these things. That is the original. If you would like to make a copy of it, you must do so to-night. It must be returned to its locked drawer in the Admiralty not later than half-past nine to-morrow morning.”

A few days later I secured through my regular Admiralty connections, whom I met at the Journalist’s, confirmation of this distribution of mines. They could not procure me the map, but they gave a list of the latitudes and longitudes, which tallied precisely with those shown on Zorinsky’s plan.

While I was still examining the scheme of minefields my companion produced two further papers and asked me to glance at them. I found them to be official certificates of exemption from military service on the ground of heart trouble, filled up with details, date of examination (two days previously), signatures of the officiating doctor, who was known to me by name, the doctor’s assistant, and the proxy of the controlling commissar. One was filled out in the name of Zorinsky. The other was complete—except for the name of the holder! A close examination and comparison of the signatures convinced me they were genuine. This was exactly the certificate I so much needed to avoid mobilization and I began to think Zorinsky a genius—an evil genius, perhaps, but still a genius!

“One for each of us,” he observed, laconically. “The doctor is a good friend of mine. I needed one for myself, so I thought I might as well get one for you, too. At the end of the day the doctor told the commissar’s assistant he had promised to examine two individuals delayed by business half an hour later. There was no need for the official to wait, he said; if he did not mind putting his signature to the empty paper, he assured him it would be all right. He knew exactly what was the trouble with the two fellows; they were genuine cases, but their names had slipped his memory. Of course, the commissar’s assistant might wait if he chose, but he assured him it was unnecessary. So the commissar’s assistant signed the papers and departed. Shortly after, the doctor’s assistant did the same. The doctor waited three-quarters of an hour for his two cases. They did not arrive, and here are the exemption certificates. Will you fill in your name at once?”

What? My name! I suddenly recollected that I had never told Zorinsky what surname I was living under, nor shown him my papers, nor initiated him into any kind of personal confidence whatsoever. Nor had my reticence been accidental. At every house I frequented I was known by a different Christian name and patronymic (the Russian mode of address), and I felt intensely reluctant to disclose my assumed surname or show the passport in my possession.

The situation was one of great delicacy, however. Could I decently refuse to inscribe my name in Zorinsky’s presence after the various favours he had shown me and the assistance he was lending me—especially by procuring me the very exemption certificate I so badly needed? Clearly it would be an offence. On the other hand, I could not invent another name and thus lose the document, since it would always have to be shown together with a regular passport. To gain time for reflection I picked up the certificate to examine it again.

The longer I thought the clearer I realized that, genuine though the certificate undoubtedly was, the plot had been laid deliberately to make me disclose the name under which I was living! Had it been the Journalist, or even the Policeman, I should not have hesitated, certainly not have winced as I did now. But it was Zorinsky, the clever, cynical, and mysterious Zorinsky, for whom I suddenly conceived, as I cast a sidelong glance at him, a most intense and overpowering repugnance.

Zorinsky caught my sidelong glance. He was lolling in a rocking-chair, with a bland expression on his misformed face as he swung forward and backward, intent on his nails. He looked up, and as our eyes met for the merest instant I saw he had not failed to note my hesitation.

I dropped into the desk-chair and seized a pen.

“Certainly,” I said, “I will inscribe my name at once. This is, indeed, a godsend.”

Zorinsky rose and stood at my side. “You must imitate the writing,” he said. “I am sorry I am not a draftsman to assist you.”

I substituted a pencil for the pen and began to draw my name in outline, copying letters from the handwriting on the certificate. I rapidly detected the essentials of the handwriting, and Zorinsky applauded admiringly as I traced the words—Joseph Krylenko. When they were done I finished them off in ink and laid down the pen, very satisfied.

“Occupation?” queried my companion, as quietly as if he were asking the hour.

Occupation! A revolver-shot at my ear could not have startled me more than this simple but completely unexpected query! The two blank lines I took to be left for the name only, but, looking closer, I saw that the second was, indeed, intended for the holder’s business or occupation. The word zaniatia (occupation) was not printed in full, but abbreviated—zan., while these three letters were concealed by the scrawling handwriting of the line below, denoting the age “thirty,” written out in full.

I managed somehow not to jump out of my seat. “Is it essential?” I asked. “I have no occupation.”

“Then you must invent one,” he replied. “You must have some sort of passport with you. What do you show the guards in the street? Copy whatever you have from that.”

Cornered! I had put my foot in it nicely. Zorinsky was inquisitive for some reason or other to learn how I was living and under what name, and had succeeded effectually in discovering part at least of what he wanted to know. There was nothing for it. I reluctantly drew my passport of the Extraordinary Commission from my pocket in order that I might copy the exact wording.

“May I see?” asked my companion, picking up the paper. I scrutinized his face as he slowly perused it. An amused smile flickered round his crooked mouth, one end of which jutted up into his cheek. “A very nice passport indeed,” he said, finally, looking with peculiar care at the signatures. “It will be a long time before you land in the cells of No. 2 Goróhovaya if you continue like this.”

He turned the paper over. Fortunately the regulation had not yet been published rendering all “documents of identification” invalid unless stamped by one’s house committee, showing the full address. So there was nothing on the back.

“You are a pupil of Melnikoff, that is clear,” he said, laying the paper down on the desk. “By the way, I have something to tell you about Melnikoff. But finish your writing first.”

I soon inscribed my occupation of clerk in an office of the Extraordinary Commission, adding also “six” to the age to conform with my other papers. As I traced the letters I tried to sum up the situation. Melnikoff, I hoped, would now soon be free, but misgivings began to arise regarding my own position, which I had a disquieting suspicion had in some way become jeopardized as a result of the disclosures I had had to make that evening to Zorinsky.

When I had finished I folded the exemption certificate and put it with my passport in my pocket.

“Well, what is the news of Melnikoff?” I said.

Zorinsky was engrossed in Pravda, the official Press organ of the Communist Party. “I beg your pardon? Oh, yes—Melnikoff. I have no doubt he will be released, but the investigator wants the whole 60,000 roubles first.”

“That is strange,” I observed, surprised. “You told me he would only want the second half after Melnikoff’s release.”

“True. But I suppose now he fears he won’t have time to get it, since he also will have to quit.”

“And meanwhile what guarantee have I—have we—that the investigator will fulfil his pledge?”

Zorinsky looked indifferently over the top of his newspaper.

“Guarantee? None,” he replied, in his usual laconic manner.

“Then why the devil should I throw away another 30,000 roubles on the off-chance——?”

“You needn’t if you don’t want to,” he put in, in the same tone.

“Are you not interested in the subject?” I said, secretly indignant at his manner.

“Of course I am. But what is the use of getting on one’s hind-legs about it? The investigator wants his money in advance. Without it, he will certainly risk nothing. With it, he may, and there’s an end of it. If I were you I would pay up, if you want Melnikoff let out. What is the good of losing your first 30,000 for nothing? You won’t get that back, anyway.”

I thought for a moment. It seemed to me highly improbable that a rascal investigator, having got his money, would deliberately elect to put his neck in a noose to save someone he didn’t care two pins about. Was there no other means of effecting the escape? I thought of the Policeman. But with inquiries being made along one line, inquiries along a second would doubtless be detected by the first, with all sorts of undesirable complications and discoveries. An idea occurred to me.

“Can we not threaten the life of the investigator if he plays false?” I suggested.

Zorinsky considered. “You mean hire someone to shoot him? That would cost a lot of money and we should be in the hands of our hired assassin as much as we are now in those of our investigator, while if he were shot we should lose the last chance of saving Melnikoff. Besides, the day after we threaten the investigator’s life he will decamp with the first thirty thousand in his pocket. Pay up, Pavel Ivanitch, pay up and take the chance—that’s my advice.”

Zorinsky picked up his paper and went on reading.

What should I do? Faint though the chance seemed, I resolved to take it, as it was the only one. I told Zorinsky I would bring him the money on the morrow.

“All right,” he said, adding thoughtfully, as he laid aside the newspaper. “By the way, I think you were perhaps right about threatening the investigator’s life. Yes. It is not a bad idea. He need not know we know we are really powerless. We will tell him he is being tracked and cannot escape us. I will see what can be done about it. You are right, after all, Pavel Ivanitch.”

Satisfied at having made this suggestion, I set about to copy the map of the minefields and then retired for the night.

Not to sleep, however. For hours I paced up and down the soft carpet, recalling every word of the evening’s conversation, and trying to invent a means of making myself again independent of Zorinsky.

Would Melnikoff be released? The prospects seemed suddenly to have diminished. Meanwhile, Zorinsky knew my name, and might, for all I knew, out of sheer curiosity, be designing to discover my haunts and acquaintances. I recalled poignantly how I had been cornered that evening and forced to show him my passport.

With this train of thought I took my newly procured exemption certificate from my pocket and examined it again. Yes, it certainly was a treasure. “Incurable heart trouble”—that meant permanent exemption. With this and my passport, I considered, I might with comparative safety even register myself and take regular rooms somewhere on the outskirts of the town. However, I resolved I would not do that as long as I could conveniently live in the centre of the city, moving about from house to house.

The only thing I did not like about my new “document” was its patent newness. I have never yet seen anybody keep tidy “documents” in Russia, the normal condition of a passport being the verge of dissolution. There was no need to reduce my certificate to that state at once, since it was only two days old, but I decided that I would at least fold and crumple it as much as my passport, which was only five days old. I took the paper and, folding it tightly in four, pressed the creases firmly between finger and thumb. Then, laying it on the table, I squeezed the folds under my thumb-nail, drawing the paper backward and forward. Finally, the creases looking no longer new, I began to ruffle the edges.

The Author, Disguised

And then a miracle occurred!

You know, of course, the conundrum: “Why is paper money preferable to coin?”—the answer being, “Because when you put it in your pocket you double it, and when you take it out you find it in creases.” Well, that is what literally did occur with my exemption certificate! While holding it in my hands and ruffling the edges, the paper all at once appeared to move of itself, and, rather like protozoa propagating its species, most suddenly and unexpectedly divided, revealing to my astonished eyes not one exemption certificate—but two!

Two of the printed sheets had by some means become so closely stuck together that it was only when the edges were ruffled that they fell apart, and neither the doctor nor Zorinsky had noted it. Here was the means of eluding Zorinsky by filling in another paper! How shall I describe my joy at the unlooked-for discovery! The nervous reaction was so intense that, much to my own amusement, I found tears streaming down my cheeks. I laughed and felt like the Count of Monte Cristo unearthing his treasure—until, sobering down a little, I recollected that the blank form was quite useless until I had another passport to back it up.

That night I thrashed out my position thoroughly and determined on a line of action. Zorinsky, I reflected, was a creature whom in ordinary life I should have been inclined to shun like the pest. I record here only those incidents and conversations which bear on my story, but when not discussing “business” he lavished a good deal of gratuitous information about his private life, particularly of regimental days, which was revolting. But in the abnormal circumstances in which I lived, to “cut” with anybody with whom I had once formed a close association was very difficult, and in Zorinsky’s case doubly so. Suppose he saw me in the street afterward, or heard of me through any of his numerous connections? Pursuing his “hobby” of contre-espionnage he would surely not fail to follow the movements of a star of the first magnitude like myself. There was no course open but to remain on good terms and profit to the full by the information I obtained from him and the people I occasionally met at his house—information which proved to be invariably correct. But he must learn nothing of my other movements, and in this respect I felt the newly discovered blank exemption form would surely be of service. I had only to procure another passport from somewhere or other.

What was Zorinsky’s real attitude toward Melnikoff, I wondered? How well had they known each other? If only I had some means of checking—but I knew none of Melnikoff’s connections in Russia. He had lived at a hospital. He had spoken of a doctor friend. I had already twice seen the woman at the lodge to which he had directed me. I thought hard for a moment.

Yes, good idea! On the morrow I would resort once more to Melnikoff’s hospital on The Islands, question the woman again, and, if possible, seek an interview with the doctor. Perhaps he could shed light on the matter. Thus deciding, I threw myself dressed on the bed and fell asleep.

---

CHAPTER V
MELNIKOFF

Some three weeks later, on a cold Sunday morning in January, I sat in the Doctor’s study at his small flat in one of the big houses at the end of the Kamenostrovsky Prospect. The news had just arrived that the German Communist leaders, Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxembourg, had been killed in Berlin, the former in attempted flight, the latter mobbed by an incensed crowd. Nobody in Russia had any idea who these two people were, but their deaths caused consternation in the Communist camp, for they had been relied upon to pull off a Red revolution in Germany and thus accelerate the wave of Bolshevism westward across Europe.

Little known as Liebknecht and Luxembourg had been outside Germany until the time of their death, in the hierarchy of Bolshevist saints they were placed second only to Karl Marx and Engels, the Moses and Aaron of the Communist Party. Russians are noted for their veneration of ikons, representing to them the memory of saintly lives, but their religious devotion is equalled by that of the Bolsheviks. Though he does not cross himself, the true Bolshevik bows down in spirit to the images of Marx and kindred revolutionaries with an obsequiousness unexcelled by devotees of the church. The difference in the two creeds lies in this: that whereas the orthodox Christian venerates saintly lives according to their degree of unworldliness, individual goodness, and spiritual sanctity, the Bolsheviks revere their saints for the vehemence with which they promoted the class war, fomented discontent, and preached world-wide revolution.

To what extent humanity suffered as the result of the decease of the two German Communists, I am unable to judge, but their loss was regarded by the revolutionary leaders as a catastrophe of the first magnitude. The official Press had heavy headlines about it, and those who read the papers asked one another who the two individuals could have been. Having studied the revolutionary movement to some extent, I was better able to appreciate the mortification of the ruling party, and was therefore interested in the great public demonstration announced for that day in honour of the dead.

My new friend, the Doctor, was both puzzled and amused by my attitude.

“I can understand your being here as an intelligence officer,” he said. “After all, your Government has to have someone to keep them informed, though it must be unpleasant for you. But why you should take it into your head to go rushing round to all the silly meetings and demonstrations the way you do is beyond me. And the stuff you read! You have only been here three or four times, but you have left a train of papers and pamphlets enough to open a propaganda department.”

The Doctor, who I learned from the woman at the lodge was Melnikoff’s uncle, was a splendid fellow. As a matter of fact, he had sided wholeheartedly with the revolution in March, 1917, and held very radical views, but he thought more than spoke about them. His nephew, Melnikoff, on the contrary, together with a considerable group of officers, had opposed the revolution from the outset, but the Doctor had not quarrelled with them, realizing one cardinal truth the Bolsheviks appear to fail to grasp, namely, that the criterion whereby men must ultimately be judged is not politics, but character.

The Doctor had a young and very intelligent friend named Shura, who had been a bosom friend of Melnikoff’s. Shura was a law student. He resembled the Doctor in his radical sympathies but differed from both him and Melnikoff in that he was given to philosophizing and probing deeply beneath the surface of things. Many were the discussions we had together, when, some weeks later, I came to know Shura well.

“Communist speeches,” he used to say, “often sound like a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury signifying nothing. But behind the interminable jargon there lie both an impulse and an ideal. The ideal is a proletarian millennium, but the impulse is not love of the worker, but hatred of the bourgeois. The Bolshevik believes that if a perfect proletarian state be forcibly established by destroying the bourgeoisie, the perfect proletarian citizen will automatically result! There will be no crime, no prisons, no need of government. But by persecuting liberals and denying freedom of thought the Bolsheviks are driving independent thinkers into the camp of that very section of society whose provocative conduct caused Bolshevism! That is why I will fight to oust the Bolsheviks,” said Shura, “they are impediments in the path of the revolution.”

It had been a strange interview when I first called on the Doctor and announced myself as a friend of Melnikoff’s. He sat bolt upright, smiling affably, and obviously ready for every conceivable contingency. The last thing in the world he was prepared to do was to believe me. I told him all I could about his nephew and he evidently thought I was very clever to know so much. He was polite but categorical. No, sir, he knew nothing whatsoever of his nephew’s movements, it was good of me to interest myself in his welfare, but he himself had ceased to be interested. I might possibly be an Englishman, as I said, but he had never heard his nephew mention an Englishman. He had no knowledge nor any desire for information as to his nephew’s past, present, or future, and if his nephew had engaged in counter-revolutionary activities it was his own fault. I could not but admire the placidity and suavity with which he said all this, and cursed the disguise which made me look so unlike what I wanted the Doctor to see.

“Do you speak English?” I said at last, getting exasperated.

I detected a twinge—ever so slight. “A little,” he replied.

“Then, damn it all, man,” I exclaimed in English, rising and striking my chest with my fist—rather melodramatically, it must have seemed—“why the devil can’t you see I am an Englishman and not a provocateur? Melnikoff must have told you something about me. Except for me he wouldn’t have come back here. Didn’t he tell you how we stayed together at Viborg, how he helped dress me, how he drank all my whisky, how——?”

The Doctor all at once half rose from his seat. The urbane, fixed smile that had not left his lips since the beginning of the interview suddenly burst into a half-laugh.

“Was it you who gave him the whisky?” he broke in, in Russian.

“Of course it was,” I replied. “I——”

“That settles it,” he said, excitedly. “Sit down; I’ll be back in a moment.”

He left the room and walked quickly to the front door. Half suspecting treachery, I peered out into the hall and feeling for the small revolver I carried, looked round to see if there were any way of escape in an emergency. The Doctor opened the front door, stepped on to the landing, looked carefully up and down the stairs, and, returning, closed all the other doors in the hall before re-entering the study. He walked over to where I stood and looked me straight in the face.

“Why on earth didn’t you come before?” he exclaimed, speaking in a low voice.

---

We rapidly became friends. Melnikoff’s disappearance had been a complete mystery to him, a mystery which he had no means of solving. He had never heard of Zorinsky, but names meant nothing. He thought it strange that so high a price should be demanded for Melnikoff, and thought I had been unwise to give it all in advance under any circumstances; but he was none the less overjoyed to hear of the prospects of his release.

After every visit to Zorinsky I called on the Doctor to tell him the latest news. On this particular morning I had told him how the evening before, in a manner which I disliked intensely, Zorinsky had shelved the subject, giving evasive answers. We had passed the middle of January already, yet apparently there was no information whatever as to Melnikoff’s case.

“There is another thing, too, that disquiets me, Doctor,” I added. “Zorinsky shows undue curiosity as to where I go when I am not at his house. He happens to know the passport on which I am living, and examination of papers being so frequent, I wish I could get another one. Have you any idea what Melnikoff would do in such circumstances?”

The Doctor paced up and down the room.

“Would you mind telling me the name?” he asked.

I showed him all my documents, including the exemption certificate, explaining how I had received them.

“Well, well, your Mr. Zorinsky certainly is a useful friend to have, I must say,” he observed, looking at the certificate, and wagging his head knowingly. “By the way, does he cost you much, if one may ask?”

“He himself? Nothing at all, or very little. Besides the sixty thousand for Melnikoff,” I calculated, “I have given him a few thousand for odd expenses connected with the case; I insist on paying for meals; I gave his wife an expensive bouquet at New Year with which she was very pleased; then I have given him money for the relief of Melnikoff’s sister, and——”

“For Melnikoff’s sister?” ejaculated the Doctor. “But he hasn’t got one!”

Vot tibie ná! No sister—then where did the money go? I suddenly remembered Zorinsky had once asked if I could give him English money. I told the Doctor.

“Look out, my friend, look out,” he said. “Your friend is certainly a clever and a useful man. But I’m afraid you will have to go on paying for Melnikoff’s non-existent sister. It would not do for him to know you had found out. As for your passport, I will ask Shura. By the way,” he added, “it is twelve o’clock. Will you not be late for your precious demonstration?”

I hurried to leave. “I will let you know how things go,” I said. “I will be back in two or three days.”

The morning was a frosty one with a bitter wind. No street-cars ran on Sundays and I walked into town to the Palace Square, the great space in front of the Winter Palace, famous for another January Sunday—“Bloody Sunday”—thirteen years before. Much had been made in the Press of the present occasion, and it appeared to be taken for granted that the proletariat would surge to bear testimony to their grief for the fallen German Communists. But round the base of a red-bedizened tribune in the centre of the square there clustered a mere handful of people and two rows of soldiers, stamping to keep their feet warm. The crowd consisted of the sturdy Communist veterans who organized the demonstration and onlookers who always join any throng to see whatever is going on.

As usual the proceedings started late, and the small but patient crowd was beginning to dwindle before the chief speakers arrived. A group of commonplace-looking individuals, standing on the tribune, lounged and smoked cigarettes, apparently not knowing exactly what to do with themselves. I pushed myself forward to be as near the speakers as possible.

To my surprise I noticed Dmitri, Stepanovna’s nephew, among the soldiers who stood blowing on their hands and looking miserable. I moved a few steps away, so that he might not see me. I was afraid he would make some sign of recognition which might lead to questions by his comrades, and I had no idea who they might be. But I was greatly amused at seeing him at a demonstration of this sort.

At length an automobile dashed up, and amid faint cheers and to the accompaniment of bugles, Zinoviev, president of the Petrograd Soviet, alighted and mounted the tribune. Zinoviev, whose real name is Apfelbaum, is a very important person in Bolshevist Russia. He is considered one of the greatest orators of the Communist Party, and now occupies the proud position of president of the Third International, the institution that is to effect the world revolution.

It is to his oratorical skill rather than any administrative ability that Zinoviev owes his prominence. His rhetoric is of a peculiar order. He is unrivalled in his appeal to the ignorant mob, but, judging by his speeches, logic is unknown to him, and on no thinking audience could he produce any impression beyond that of wonderment at his uncommon command of language, ready though cheap witticisms, and inexhaustible fund of florid and vulgar invective. Zinoviev is, in fact, the consummate gutter-demagogue. He is a coward, shirked office in November, 1917, fearing the instability of the Bolshevist coup, has since been chief advocate of all the insaner aspects of Bolshevism, and is always the first to lose his head and fly into a panic when danger-clouds appear on any horizon.

Removing his hat, Zinoviev approached the rail, and stood there in his rich fur coat until someone down below gave a signal to cheer. Then he began to speak in the following strain:

“Comrades! Wherefore are we gathered here to-day? What mean this tribune and this concourse of people? Is it to celebrate a triumph of world revolution, to hail another conquest over the vicious ogre of Capitalism? Alas, no! To-day we mourn the two greatest heroes of our age, murdered deliberately, brutally, and in cold blood by blackguard capitalist agents. The German Government, consisting of the social-traitor Scheidemann and other supposed Socialists, the scum and dregs of humanity, have sold themselves like Judas Iscariot for thirty shekels of silver to the German bourgeoisie, and at the command of the capitalists ordered their paid hirelings foully to murder the two chosen representatives of the German workers and peasants ...” and so on.

I never listened to Zinoviev without recalling a meeting in the summer of 1917 when he was the chief speaker. He had just returned to Russia with a group of other Bolshevist leaders (very few of whom were present during the revolution) and was holding incendiary meetings in out-of-the-way places. He was thin and slim and looked the typical Jewish student of any Russian university. But after a year’s fattening on the Russian proletariat he had swelled not only politically but physically, and his full, handsome features and flowing bushy hair spoke of anything but privation.

Contrary to custom, Zinoviev’s speech was short. It must have been cold, speaking in the chilly wind, and in any case there were not many people to talk to.

The next speaker was more novel—Herr Otto Pertz, president of the German Soviet of Petrograd. Why a German Soviet continued to live and move and have its being in Petrograd, or what its functions were, nobody seemed to know. The comings and goings of unsere deutsche Genossen appeared to be above criticism and were always a mystery. Herr Otto Pertz was tall, clean shaven, Germanly tidy, and could not speak Russian.

“Genossen! heute feiern wir——” he began, and proceeded to laud the memory of the fallen heroes and to foretell the coming social revolution in Germany. The dastardly tyrants of Berlin, insolently styling themselves Socialists, would shortly be overthrown. Kapitalismus, Imperialismus, in fact everything but Kommunismus, would be demolished. He had information that within a week or two Spartacus (the German Bolshevist group), with all Germany behind it, would successfully seize power in Berlin and join in a triumphant and indissoluble alliance with the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic.

As Otto Pertz commenced his oration a neatly dressed little lady of about fifty, who stood at my side near the foot of the tribune, looked up eagerly at the speaker. Her eyes shone brightly and her breath came quickly. Seeing I had noticed her she said timidly, “Spricht er nicht gut? Sagen Sie doch, spricht er nicht gut?”

To which I of course replied, “Sehr gut,” and she relapsed bashfully into admiration of Otto, murmuring now and again, “Ach! es ist doch wahr, nicht?” with which sentiment also I would agree.

The crowd listened patiently, as the Russian crowd always listens, whoever speaks, and on whatever subject. The soldiers shivered and wondered what the speaker was talking about. His speech was not translated.

But when Otto Pertz ceased there was a commotion in the throng. For some moments I was at a loss as to what was in progress, until at last a passage was made and, borne on valiant Communist shoulders, a guy, the special attraction of the day, was produced. The effigy, made of pasteboard, represented a ferocious-looking German with Kaiser-like moustachios, clothed in evening dress, and bearing across its chest in large letters on cardboard the name of the German Socialist,