“Yes. You know—” She hesitated. “You know, there have been many arrests these days in St. Petersburg.”
Nastasia was coming to something, but what I could not divine.
“We are all liable to search,” she went on. “Perhaps you will not mind keeping some papers for us?”
This was no unusual request. People who expected the police often handed packets of correspondence, legal papers, and other documents to friends who were not suspected. In common with many other non-Russians in St. Petersburg I had frequently accepted such a trust. An English correspondent had brought the original copy of the Viborg manifesto with its appended signatures back to St. Petersburg, at the request of the leaders of the Constitutional Democrats. Without a second thought I told Nastasia I would gladly keep anything for her, then turned, and together we walked to her house.
Nastasia was living on the top floor of a large apartment building, with three other girls—all members of the organization, although one was ostensibly a student in the university, one was studying music at the conservatory, one was a teacher, and Nastasia was professionally a nurse. Nastasia had been with the troops in Manchuria and after Mukden her hospital was among those that fell into the hands of the Japanese.
When we arrived the three other girls were sitting round a samovar, talking. Two of them puffed little Russian cigarettes. I drank a glass of tea with them, took the papers they gave me, and departed. I heard the Kazan bells sound one as I poked the sleeping dwornik of my own lodgings, to open the door for me.
The next morning I left home at eleven o’clock. I had not passed many yards beyond the Hotel Victoria in the Kazanskiai when the report of two light bombs, followed presently by a rattling revolver fire and gun cracks, sounded on a street only two blocks away. When I reached the spot the confusion and tumult was so great that I was unable to make anything of the mêlée. The first thing I came upon was a wounded horse streaming blood into a gutter. Around the corner was a general riot of panicky men and women, terrified horses, and stolid Cossacks and police. A carriage was standing in the middle of the road—deserted. One of the horses that belonged to it was lying dead in its tracks. Windowpanes for a block and a half were shattered. There seemed to be wounded and killed men, and a number of arrests, but my impression was mostly a blur, with here and there a projecting detail.
Intuitively I felt a connection between this incident—whatever it was—and my experience with Nastasia the night before. The more I thought about it the more curious I became. I hurried over to Nastasia’s, only to find the apartment deserted.
In the early afternoon I learned from various eye-witnesses what had happened. The carriage I had seen standing in the street had been conveying some government moneys across the city. The trip was supposedly secret, and the carriage was guarded by Cossacks. The government had learned before this not to convey money anywhere at stated times or intervals. Only one man was supposed to know when a trip should be made, and this one was always a man of such rank, or position, as to have authority to order the military escort on the spur of the moment. To this day it is not known how the terrorists—Maximalists as it chanced—knew of this particular transfer of money. All that the government authorities ever learned about the affair were the bare facts of the exploit.
An apple-vender strolling down the street of the Catharine Canal had paused to rest his basket on the canal railing. Opposite the spot where he stood was a little tea-house into which nearly a score of young men had