XVII
NEW YEAR WITH THE JAPANESE
New Year’s Day, 1919, began for me at fifteen minutes after midnight, with a thunderous knocking at the glass door of my room. This was rather disconcerting, for there had been rumors the night before that the Bolshevists were going to rise in the city, and slay. The glass door, with its colored paper stuck in the panes, was not ideal for siege purposes; but it had certain advantages, in that I could shoot through it while the Bolshevists were breaking it in.
I got out of bed without making any reply to the summons. I had opened the tiny trap-door in the wall which served as a ventilator, and the room was well chilled, for there was no heat in the radiators. It was about fifty below zero outside—and about the same inside.
Turning on the electric drop-light at my desk, I put on my purple dressing-gown, and slipped my automatic into its pocket. Then I unlocked and threw open the door, stepping discreetly to one side, a habit one soon acquires in a country so free and equal as Siberia.
The hall was quite dark. I made out a figure close at hand, and in the light from my electric lamp I caught the gleam of gold shoulder straps. A Russian officer clicked his heels, bowed, and spoke my name in good English.
I bade him enter, supposing he was an officer sent by the Ataman. But he had just reached Chita by special train from Omsk, and was bound for Vladivostok. He came to tell me of a Bolshevist uprising in Omsk, some ten days before, which had been put down. Many Bolshevist prisoners released from the prisons by their friends outside, had been shot.
This news did not surprise me at the time. I had been told three weeks before that the Bolshevists would rise in Omsk on that very date, release the prisoners, and attack the Kolchak garrison. I made an effort to recall who had foretold the uprising, and remembered a drosky-driver who spoke English with whom I had drunk tea in a station down the line. On the supposition that he was merely boasting for my benefit when he claimed to be closely in touch with the Bolshevists, I had let the story pass as idle talk, for if one attempted to report all rumors, a dozen secretaries would be required by every officer in the country. But now I realized that the drosky-driver was in reality in the confidence of the Bolshevist leaders at Omsk, several thousand versts away. He had foretold the exact date of the uprising now reported to me.
My Russian officer’s train had encountered Bolshevists at two stations, and from the second his train had been run back for the purpose of reinforcing his guard. When he ran down the line again to where his progress had been opposed, he got through without difficulty, for in the meantime the Bolshevists had been driven away.
Having warned me of these facts, he was obliged to hasten back to his train. With a click and a handshake he was away, and I went back to bed, not quite sure I had not dreamed a chapter from a book with a Prisoner of Zenda flavor.
I shivered myself to sleep, having been chilled to the bone while I listened to the adventures of the Russian officer, and carried on, as the British say, till Werkstein came thumping at my door at eight to tell me that I must hurry to catch a train for a New Year’s celebration at a station some sixty versts away, where some of Semenoff’s garrison was to make merry. Of course, it was thirteen days before the Russian New Year, but the Cossack never misses an excuse to celebrate anything.