EXECUTION OF THE NIHILIST CONSPIRATORS.
A few moments before the Czar was to pass on his return from the Cathedral the students came together and whispered, and the two were immediately and quietly arrested. Their names were given as Andreieffsky and Petroff, university students, and this was proven to be the truth.
A thrilling discovery was made, however, at once. The innocent-looking law-book was really a most dangerous infernal machine—sufficiently powerful not alone to kill everybody in the Czar’s carriage, but many in the crowd, and perhaps to have blown down some of the neighboring houses. The traveling-sack was full of dynamite bombs of the ordinary spherical pattern.
—Fig. 1. Interior.—————Fig. 2. Exterior.
A. Glass Tube. B. Fulminate. C. Bullets. D. Dynamite.
I reproduce here a diagram of the book-bomb from the excellent account of the attempted assassination given by the New York World a few days after it occurred.
The outside was made of wood and pasteboard, so artistically that only the closest inspection would discover the fact that the machine was not really a book. In the center of the interior, in the place marked C, were a number of hollow bullets filled with strychnine, which poison was also plastered upon the outside of the missiles. Above this were small compartments filled with fulminate, with a glass tube of sulphuric acid. To the tube was tied a string, which would break it when thrown, spilling it into the fulminate and thus exploding the dynamite with which the whole of the hollow parts of the interior was densely packed. Fully a hundred people must have been killed had the bomb been exploded as intended. The expert who examined the bomb, after handling the bullets carelessly put his finger in his mouth, and was seriously, though not fatally, poisoned.
Hardly had the arrest been made when the Czar was notified at the Cathedral. He ordered that the news should be withheld from the Empress, although he was himself visibly affected. He sprang into his sleigh with the Czarowitz, and drove by an unused route to the railway station. The Czarina followed shortly after in a carriage, greatly agitated by a presentiment of evil. Not until the train had started was she informed of the occurrence. She burst into tears, and was inconsolable for the rest of the journey. Once safe in his Gatschina Palace, the Czar is said to have given vent to his feelings in the strongest language, heaping anathemas upon the heads of the Nihilists, and threatening dire revenge.