A first-class compartment for two was engaged on the gilt-edged St. Petersburg-Moscow train which leaves St. Petersburg at ten-thirty every evening. Nastasia dressed as a bride, Sasha as a bridegroom. A party of half a dozen friends got together in proper attire for the wedding party seeing the happy couple started on their way.
Sasha being without a passport was the one obviously vulnerable point in the outfit. If any suspicious gendarme should happen to question the pair a passport of any kind would probably disarm his suspicions, whereas no passport at all would mean sure arrest.
“Lend Sasha your passport,” Nastasia said to me.
“Mine! Oh, I can’t do that!” I explained.
“Why not? It may be the means of saving his life. If he gets caught to-night without a passport he will be executed. Let him have yours for this night only. From Moscow it will be returned to you.”
I hesitated a long time but finally handed my precious identification paper over to Sasha.
At ten-twenty-nine exactly, a noisy, rollicking crowd of young people swept into the Moscow station. A bride and groom led the way, followed by several friends who pelted them with flowers and confetti. The rows of gendarmes whom we passed between smiled broadly and evidently never suspected that the whole party was a ruse. We all knew that several of the men under whose very noses we passed held in their pockets photographs of Sasha. I closed the compartment door as the daring couple stumbled hurriedly into the train. A half-minute later the three-bells signal of departure sounded and the train pulled away.
The next morning we waited for the telegram Sasha had promised to send announcing their arrival in Moscow. By noon we began to grow anxious. When evening came, and nothing had been heard from them, our worry increased. The next morning brought neither message nor my passport, which should have come then. That day wore by and the morning of the third day dawned, and still no word. We were all prepared, now, to hear the worst. One thing puzzled us. Why did the police not make public their capture—if they were taken? Every other arrest made in connection with this incident was promptly made known. We pondered over this a good deal. Finally, on the evening of the third day, we called together a council of trusted friends and the opinion of the conference was that Nastasia and Sasha had been taken; that my passport had probably occasioned some bewilderment, and until the rightful owner of the passport was found the capture would not be made public. Sasha, we knew, would give no hint as to where I might be found, and it would naturally take several days to locate me. This being the best understanding of the situation we could reach, the precariousness of my own position was apparent to all. If I were so directly implicated in a terrorist act as the finding of my passport in Sasha’s possession would imply, no power on earth could save me from the fate which had befallen all the others implicated in the incident.
Opinion was divided as to the wise thing for me to do. Two or three urged me to fly to the frontier at once—that very hour. Others counseled that I go to Moscow first to make sure of the fate of our friends and my passport, for Sasha had promised that if he was taken he would do all he could to destroy the passport. If he had succeeded in this I would merely have to obtain a fresh passport—there are always ways of doing that. The latter plan appealed to me, so I procured a seat in the same train they had traveled by three nights earlier. I took with me a dress-suit case containing necessary clothing and—alas! for the foolishness of men!—two terribly incriminating packets. No one thought I would be arrested in the train en route to Moscow, and so it did not occur to any of us that there was peril in my carrying two valuable packages to comrades in Moscow. The first was a bundle of original Peasants’ Union documents. At that time to even belong to the Peasants’ Union was sufficient cause for exile to Siberia. The other was twenty copies of one of the instalments of Shisko’s “History of the Russian People,” which had been forbidden by the police, and to be possessed of one copy was cause for arrest. Further, in my pocket I slipped a Browning revolver, although I had no permit to carry a revolver at all in that part of Russia. Russians themselves are constantly foolishly careless, but until this night I had not understood how easy it is to be blind to one’s dangers when they are close before one, or hedging one round.
Until the train had actually started I had no companion in the compartment, although there were places for four. But as the bells sounded and the train started an officer of gendarmes joined me. He sat down opposite me, looked me over rather searchingly and asked me in Russian what was the time.