Professor Lomonosoff is the Minister of Railways. We are carrying six and a half million pounds in gold, which he is taking to Germany to buy locomotives. We are accompanied by an armed guard.
We were held up many hours last night because there was an accident on-the line and it took a long time to clear. Periodically the axle of the gold car breaks or the oil-box takes fire, and we stop perpetually: but we are steadily nearing our goal. It really does not matter how long we take so long as we catch next Thursday’s boat from Reval.
Besides Lomonosoff’s staff, which he is taking with him to Germany, our party consists of Vanderlip and Neuroteva, and a charming man called D——, who is a railway expert. He was once a very rich man and in the Tsar’s entourage. He seemed anxious to tell me as quickly as possible that he was a Monarchist, as if to be mistaken for a Bolshevik were more than he could bear. He looked anæmic and well bred, with deep-set, sad eyes and a calm and resignation that were almost tragic.
He differed bitterly and openly in his views from Lomonosoff, and said: “I am a Russian. I am working for Russia, not for the Bolsheviks,” and then called them robbers. Professor Lomonosoff sat back in his chair and chuckled. He said: “You call us robbers, but we called you robbers.” It was just a question of which robber came out on top.
Afterwards, when Lomonosoff left us, I begged D—— not to indulge in any more political discussions. “I shall be over the frontier in a few hours, but you have to live here. Do take heed for yourself.”
He shrugged his shoulders. “One dies but once,” he said, laughing, and then explained: “They know my views well, but I can do good work for them, and they know that I am not in touch with counter-Revolutionary movements, and that I take no part in politics, so I am safe enough.”
Lomonosoff, who had been a railway official in Tsarist days, told us how he had accompanied the Tsar’s train to Tsarskoe-Selo. The Tsar, he said, had even up to that moment not realised the meaning of the Revolution. He probably thought he was retiring to Siberia until the storm had blown over. At the station, on his arrival, his bodyguard had by courtesy been drawn up to greet him. The Tsar alighted from the train, and went to inspect the guard with the usual greeting: “Good health to you, soldiers!” The answer is: “Good health to your Imperial Majesty,” but on this occasion the soldiers answered almost with one voice, “Good health to you, Colonel!” The Tsar seemed to realise for the first time the real situation. He became ashen white, turned the collar of his overcoat up, and shrank away.
Lomonosoff also gave us a vivid and thrilling account of the detailed organisation, in which he took part, with the purpose of wrecking the Tsar’s train while he was on his way to Siberia. Two runaway engines were to be despatched with no one on board to collide with the back of the Tsar’s train. These plans were only frustrated at the last second by news of the Tsar’s abdication.
When he proceeded to tell us how the Tsar’s entourage deserted him as rats do a sinking ship, it was evidently very painful to D—— who sat grimly silent. I could not help feeling that they enjoyed his discomfiture a little bit.
Later, when we were again alone together, he said to me rather passionately: “It is not true that everyone deserted my Tsar, for my best friend followed him to Siberia to share his death, and there were devoted friends of the Tsarina who did the same.”