“Come quickly out of this,” he murmured, and we hastened into a carriage and drove to the home of a mutual friend.
Comrades in Moscow, who had been notified of the coming of Sasha and Nastasia by a secret-code telegram, had sent a messenger to a station nearly half-way between the two cities to warn them that the dangers in the Moscow station for a day or two would be too great for them to think of arriving there.
Thereupon they had left the train at a small water station and lay in hiding three days. From there it had not been possible for them to send any word to us in St. Petersburg. Nastasia had taken a circuitous route into Moscow, while Sasha had boarded the very train I was on, thus we arrived to-day.
My passport was returned to me, and I quickly delivered up my dangerous packets.
Sasha planned to leave for the south immediately, but a soldier of the revolution is never master of his own destiny. In the early afternoon a cipher telegram came from St. Petersburg urging Sasha’s return there that night.
This seemed the height of folly to me. After jeopardizing his own life, and the lives of others, to get away from St. Petersburg and then to turn right back again—this was more than I could understand. But Sasha knew that more lives depended upon his obedience, so he prepared to leave that evening. Trains from Moscow back to St. Petersburg were not apt to be so closely watched as those going out.
Sasha thought to go on the nine-thirty train. I went to the station with him, for he seemed to have a strong premonition that he was about to perform his last service for the cause to which his life was dedicated.
When I tried to purchase a ticket I was told that there was not a place left on the train. Sasha had, therefore, to wait for the ten-thirty train. We sat down at a table in the buffet and ordered two glasses of tea.
Presently a member of the Moscow organization, a friend of Sasha’s, stepped up to us, pointed out a certain man at an adjoining table and said: “Watch that fellow carefully. He is a spy. He may be shadowing you—or maybe some one else—but watch him.”
We did watch him for half an hour and became pretty well convinced that he was following Sasha.