Towards the end of June a secret emissary of one of the Monarchist organisations called upon the Bishop of Ekaterinburg and tried to get into communication with the Imperial prisoners through the clergy; but this proved to be impossible. He then proposed that, at all events, some food and comforts should be sent to the prison-house. Dr. Derevenko, who had been permitted to remain in the city, gave his assistance at this juncture. By some means he was in touch with the warders. Avdeiev agreed to take in milk and other provisions if they reached the house without attracting notice. The nuns of the monastery thereupon sent two novices, dressed in lay garments, to the house, with all manner of dairy produce. Avdeiev received them himself. These journeys became frequent. The poor captives felt comforted, morally and physically. They had not been forgotten, and the men who had been so terrible were so much kinder. Hope once more blossomed. The Grand Duchesses looked bright and cheerful, “as if ready to smile,” says a person who saw them at this time. The nuns, emboldened by Avdeiev’s attitude, brought even some tobacco for the ex-Tsar. Avdeiev referred to him as “The Emperor.”
In the beginning of July some suspicions must have arisen among the Jewish camarilla, or perhaps Moscow had received “information.” As the time was getting ripe for “action,” no doubt steps had been taken to verify the arrangements, and the discovery of disaffection among the Russian guards followed. Avdeiev was at once dismissed, the Russian guards moved out of the house into premises on the opposite side of the lane, and, with one exception, were forbidden to come into the house. This exception was Pavel Medvedev. He retained his post as chief warder. The Russian guard continued to provide sentries for the outside posts only. They could do no harm there, and served to throw dust in the eyes of the public.
All these changes were carried out by the new commandant, a person with whom the reader is already acquainted, namely, Yankel Yurovsky, the son of a Jew convict, himself a mystery man, having obtained money in Germany for unexplained “services,” and presently one of the chiefs of the local chrezvychaika. Yankel brought with him a squad of ten “Letts”—as the Russians called them—to mount guard inside the prison-house and take charge of the machine-gun posts. These men were the hired assassins of the red okhrana. They were not Letts but Magyars, some of them really Magyarised Germans. It must be remembered that Siberia was Sovietised from the east, not by Russians in the first place, but by the soldiers of Wilhelm and his Austrian henchmen, who acted under orders from the two Kaisers. These so-called Letts had entered the service of the chrezvychaika after helping to carry out the German design to undermine Russia.
Innumerable evidences prove that the newcomers are correctly classified. The Russian guards could tell by their speech that they were foreigners. To designate them as Letts was quite natural because the Letts formed the backbone and bulk of the foreign mercenaries of Sovietdom and therefore any non-Russian Red-guard became a “Lett.” But, as a matter of fact, the Magyars resemble Letts in their appearance and accent. Yurovsky spoke to them in a foreign language. Besides Russian and Yiddish he knew only German. Among the papers found afterwards in the prison-house was an unfinished letter to his “Tereschen” from one of the “Letts.” It was in Magyar, but, according to the findings of experts, the writer was evidently a German. He used capital letters for substantives, often employed Gothic characters and made glaring blunders in grammar, such as no Magyar would make.
Another of the “Letts” left a still more eloquent evidence of his nationality. This man had stood on guard on the terrace communicating with the dining-room and overlooking the garden—a very important post with a machine-gun capable of sweeping the interior of the house and all the approaches from the garden side. On the very day before the murder, this man wrote in pencil on the wall of the house a record of his service as follows:—
| András Verhás | ||
| Orsegen | 1918 VII/15 |
Alongside this inscription he had tried to write the Russian equivalent, but could not spell out the word “karaul” (guard duty), in Magyar örsegen. Scraps of paper on which other “Letts” had practised writing Russian words were also found.
We are able to fix the date approximately when the German-Magyar guard and Yurovsky took possession. The lay sisters bringing their usual offerings met with a strange reception on or about July 10th—about a week before the murder. Avdeiev did not come out to them. Some of the Russian guards, whom they knew, were standing near the door, looking very much confused, and at first not disposed to take charge of the gifts. Finally, however, they did so. The sisters then walked away. Presently the soldiers came running after them. “Please will you come back,” they said. The nuns returned. An individual whom they afterwards identified as Yurovsky, inquired by whose authority they had brought the provisions. “Avdeiev and Derevenko,” was the truthful reply. “O, they are both in it, are they,” he remarked ominously. He nevertheless permitted them to come again, “but with milk only.”
This last week of their life must have been the most dreadful one of all for the Romanovs. Brutal and bestial as the Russians had been in the early part of their wardenship, they were preferable, even at their worst, to the silent relentless torture applied by Yurovsky, who also was a drunkard. He and his band watched them literally like a cat watches a mouse. He was polite to the Tsar and spoke softly to Alexis; he even permitted a priest to come and say prayers, which comforted Alexandra and the poor captives unspeakably; yet there is evidence that never had they looked so utterly, hopelessly wretched as under the tutelage of the Jew. This man’s brothers and sisters describe him as a “cruel tyrant who would not hesitate at anything to attain his ends.”
The man and his executioners only waited for the signal that was to come from Yankel Sverdlov. Everything was ready for the murder. The victims had been adequately tortured. Goloshchekin, the Jew Sadist, licked his lips in pleasurable anticipation.