The time taken up on the journey between Petersburg and Moscow varies greatly according to the state of the weather and the amount of snow on the line. But even in the summer the best trains are allowed twelve hours, while the slow ones take nearly twenty-four. The special Siberian express was timed to reach the ancient capital of the czars at ten o’clock in the morning, and we had overtaken it with rather more than an hour to spare.
I ordered the driver to creep up gradually, but not to approach too near the hindmost coach of the train in front until Moscow was in sight.
Obedient to my instructions, he slackened speed by degrees, till we were rolling along at the same rate as the express, with a space of three or four hundred yards between us.
Presently a red flag was thrust out from a side window at the rear of the last coach and waved furiously. The driver of my engine responded with first a green and then a white signal, indication that there was no danger though caution was desirable.
The express perceptibly quickened its speed, but of course without our allowing it to get farther ahead. At last the spires of the Kremlin, and the green copper domes gleamed out across the waste, and I nodded to the driver to close up.
He managed the maneuver with the skill of an artist. Inch by inch we neared the guard’s van in front, and our buffers were actually touching as the engine in front blew off steam and we slowed alongside the Moscow station.
Before the wheels of the express had ceased to move I was out on the platform, and running up to the guard of the express.
“I have come on the pilot engine from Petersburg,” I told him hurriedly. “Tell no one of my arrival. Do not report the chase. If you are questioned, say that you have orders to say nothing. And now tell me which is the train for Dalny and Port Arthur, and when does it leave?”
The guard, thoroughly cowed, promised implicit obedience. He showed me a long corridor train with handsome sleeping cars and dining saloons, which was drawn up ready at another platform.
“That is the train which goes to Baikal,” he told me. “If the ice on the lake will bear, rails may be laid right across it; if not, there will be sleighs to transport the passengers to a train on the other side. The train leaves at noon.”