The doctor turned to obey—and the officer shot him in the back of the head.
“Oh, what have you done,” cried the doctor’s wife as she saw her husband fall.
“Hold your tongue and wipe up that mess on the floor,” retorted the officer as he turned to withdraw his party.
Owing to the outcry that was raised against this wanton murder the officer was arrested, but after a fortnight’s detention he was released.
The most cruel tortures are applied to prisoners in more than one Russian prison, but I think that during my year in the country I learned of no darker deeds than those perpetrated by the chief of the secret police in Warsaw, a man named Victor Green (a literal translation from the Russian). Green became dissatisfied with the number of arrests that were being made in the old Polish capital, so he ordered the arrest of many innocent men and women and then had them tortured to wring from them confessions implicating other people. I heard of his applying the most excruciating torture to young girls as well as to mere boys.
A Russian writer named Vladimeroff went to Warsaw shortly after my visit to investigate the case of a girl of eighteen, concerning whom certain terrible reports were then circulating. The following is a translation of his report on this case:
A young man named Rottkopf, a citizen of Riga, went to visit a friend who lived, as most Russians live in the larger cities, in an apartment-house containing a number of families. Now, most unfortunately for Rottkopf, just before his visit a bomb had been found by the police secreted in one of the flats. Suspicion pointed to Rottkopf’s friend. He was promptly arrested, and as a friend of the suspected man Rottkopf was arrested also.
Rottkopf had a sister, a young girl of eighteen. She, one must remember, had committed no crime. No such charge was brought against her, but she was a sister of a friend of a suspected man, and that was enough for the police. The very evening of her brother’s arrest she went out to drink tea with some friends in company with her younger brother. The police descended upon the house, and she was arrested without even a chance to change her evening clothes or to take linen along. She did not even know why she was imprisoned or of what crime the zealous police suspected her.
She was put in a solitary cell in a secret apartment of the Warsaw citadel. A sentinel was placed within; the cell was bare, with the exception of a stool and a small table. There was no bed. The bare, stone floor was meant for a sleeping-place. The sudden transition from the cheerful company of friends into the severe and gloomy surroundings of the dungeon stunned the girl. She comprehended nothing for quite awhile. She sat in a corner of the cell lost in thought. From this condition she was suddenly awakened by the indifferent voice of the sentinel. “Wake up! You will soon be taken to be tortured.”
Suddenly the cell door opened, the chief inspector entered, said a few words to the guard, and she was led through a number of poorly lit corridors and into a small room, where an oil-lamp was feebly flickering. “Listen attentively, and you will understand!” said the guard rudely as he left the room and bolted the door.