All was dark inside, only a feeble light from the court penetrated through the windows. We passed the corridor, then a large room, then a small room. Here Pashinsky stopped—and I heard his heavy breathing. Then he threw open the door.
I saw mattresses on the floor and in a far corner pale, trembling figures, glued together by fear.
Pashinsky hesitated for a moment—to pick out the one he wanted—and then with an outcry, suddenly rushed to this mass of helpless panic-stricken bodies, and a struggle between a delirious man, feebled by desire, and these ladies, began.
I jumped on him from behind; preoccupied, he did not feel when I put the rope around his neck so that the collar wouldn't be in my way, tightened my weapon in a deadlock and dragged him away—almost before his carnal touch contaminated the Princesses—into the next room, and shut the doors.
He was making some efforts to free himself, hitting my knees with his heels, and growling from rage; then he bit me in the hand. But in a minute I was already firmly sitting on his back, with my knees on his awkwardly turned arms, twisting the rope with all of the strength I had.
"Please, don't kill him," I heard a sobbing whispering voice say, and other voices, too, repeated the "don't kill."
This Kerensky idea made me quite angry and I said as calmly as I could under the circumstances:
"With all of my reverence for your order, your Highnesses, I refuse to obey. Please shut the doors and don't wake up the others,—I have my own accounts to settle." And when the doors closed, I kept tightening and tightening the rope until his head turned and his tongue,—rough and dry,—came way out and was touching my hands, and his face became hot and wet. He made a few convulsive movements—and became still.
When his head fell with a dull sound on the floor, I took him out under cover of the night, and threw his body into the well. I walked out onto Tuliatskaya Street and chatted for a while with Leibner and Vert.
I was changed and nobody asked me where my friend Pashinsky was.