“What could I do?” he muttered. “People like myself cannot fight on either side in such a war as this, no matter how much we may instinctively dislike the dictatorship of the mob…. I only regret that I am so far from my mother in Bessarabia!”
Baklanov was formally taking over the office from the Commandant. “Here,” said the Colonel nervously, “are the keys to the desk.”
A Red Guard interrupted. “Where’s the money?” he asked rudely. The Colonel seemed surprised. “Money? Money? Ah, you mean the chest. There it is,” said the Colonel, “just as I found it when I took possession three days ago. Keys?” The Colonel shrugged. “I have no keys.”
The Red Guard sneered knowingly. “Very convenient,” he said.
“Let us open the chest,” said Baklanov. “Bring an axe. Here is an American comrade. Let him smash the chest open, and write down what he finds there.”
I swung the axe. The wooden chest was empty.
“Let’s arrest him,” said the Red Guard, venomously. “He is Kerensky’s man. He has stolen the money and given it to Kerensky.”
Baklanov did not want to. “Oh, no,” he said. “It was the Kornilovitz before him. He is not to blame.
“The devil!” cried the Red Guard. “He is Kerensky’s man, I tell you. If you won’t arrest him, then we will, and we’ll take him to Petrograd and put him in Peter-Paul, where he belongs!” At this the other Red Guards growled assent. With a piteous glance at us the Colonel was led away….
Down in front of the Soviet palace an auto-truck was going to the front. Half a dozen Red Guards, some sailors, and a soldier or two, under command of a huge workman, clambered in, and shouted to me to come along. Red Guards issued from headquarters, each of them staggering under an arm-load of small, corrugated-iron bombs, filled with grubit—which, they say, is ten times as strong, and five times as sensitive as dynamite; these they threw into the truck. A three-inch cannon was loaded and then tied onto the tail of the truck with bits of rope and wire.