CHAPTER THREE

THE TEETH OF the man next to me were chattering. Every time anybody looked at him he seemed to meditate instant flight. A woman near was praying under her breath. But for the most part the crowd in which we were wedged was silent and cowed. We were pressing up to the barrier of the platform from which the train departed for Moscow. In front of us at the gate was a small group of Red Guards and officials examining passports. They were making a good job of it. One by one the crowd filtered through the barrier and joined the mass of humanity on the platform.

At last I came up level with the barrier. It was a nervous moment. My pass had been signed and sealed by an official of whom I had no news since last seeing him. For all I knew his part in the conspiracy had already been discovered, or he had slipped away from his post while yet there was time. The chances that he had been discovered were certainly big.

I had already arranged my plan of campaign and was ready for all eventualities. My right hand was on the butt of my revolver. If I was to be taken I would not be the only victim. With my left hand I thrust my passport into the soldier’s face, at the same time favouring him with my most malevolent stare. It was the Tcheka stare, boring him through and through. ‘Ah, my fine friend,’ it said, ‘in these days even a comrade might be in the pay of the cursed English, and I am not sure that I do not suspect you yourself.’

Such was the message my look was meant to convey, and so did the fellow interpret it. Innocent or guilty, it was no pleasure for a Red soldier to be suspect by the Tcheka. The Tcheka had an uncanny way of proving a man’s guilt.

‘Collaborator of the Tcheka,’ said the soldier, pushing back the document to me with hardly a glance at it. ‘Pass, comrade.’

I was on the platform and in a minute had mixed with the crowd. A compact, seething mass of humanity was pressing, swaying, forcing its way into the carriages. Others came up and burrowed their way through. The squeeze was terrific. Some of the more athletic found a place on the roof. Bolshevik Russia always travels so. For my part, in my position of a collaborator of the Tcheka-Criminel, and officer of the Extraordinary Commission, I was justified in travelling first class. Third is for the canaille. Comrades travel first. But I did not choose to assert my authority too strongly. I put my head down, and burrowed and wriggled my path through the swarm into one of the third-class cars, and landed bruised and breathless on the dirty floor. The carriage stank abominably and it was packed to suffocation point. Nobody spoke a word. The only sound was that of the breathing of my travelling companions. It was quite dark. The windows were blotted out by surplus members of this human freight. It was insufferably hot. Outside the Black Hole of Calcutta or the hold of a slave ship, the world can have seen few things to compare with the interior of a Soviet train.

At last we pulled up at Kline. A number of people got out, myself among them. I walked over to the bookstall and bought copies of the Moscow papers. There was ten minutes to wait, and I had ample leisure to find out exactly what was happening in Moscow. The news was not reassuring. Through the instrumentality of René Marchand a great anti-Bolshevist plot, emanating from the Allied legations in general and the British in particular, had been discovered. The complicity of Lockhart had been proved. Friede had been arrested and he and his sister were prisoners, the Mlles S. were prisoners. Berzin had made some astounding revelations.

The game was up, and, according to my arrangement with Grammatikoff, my course was an immediate return to Petrograd. But my responsibility was too great. Through me my friends were involved in the greatest risk, Lockhart was a prisoner, Hill, the gallant and trusty Hill, was – the Lord knew where. And now my Russian agents were leaderless in the midst of a city of terror. The vengeance of the Tcheka was a ghastly thing. If I left my friends in their present terrible plight and slipped back to Petrograd and Finland, how could I ever look the world in the face again? Besides, something might yet be done. I might assist in the escape of some of those, who were gravely committed and as yet had avoided capture. At the worst I might offer up myself as the sole author and instigator of the plot and hostage for my friends. The whole of my scheme had collapsed, and at the moment I felt that I had nothing left to live for, and might just as well die as Cromie had done.

It took me barely a minute to decide upon proceeding to Moscow. It was pretty obvious in the present condition of affairs that I could not travel by the train and run the gauntlet of the Red inquisition at the station. And at that very moment I noticed a Red soldier and a Commissary making their way down the platform and examining the papers of the people crowded thereon. The man was only a few paces from me. There was not a moment to be lost. I edged my way back to the train, and, seizing a favourable moment, dropped on to the line and dived under the car. Of course, many people in the crowd saw me, but I did not mind that. For passengers to hide under a train while the inspection of papers is in progress is not an unusual thing in Red Russia.

As a matter of fact on this occasion I found quite a little colony of fugitives already huddled beneath the train, and my course was seriously impeded as I crawled down the track towards the rear. About fifty yards from the track I noticed a small group of trees and in them I made up my mind to take cover. Slowly I raised myself until my eye was on a level with the platform. The Commissary was busy with a poor wretch, who had fallen on his knees before him, crying and protesting; the Red soldier was fingering his bayonet suggestively. Now for it. Bending low I raced from the railway track to the friendly cover of the trees, where I threw myself on the ground on my face. As soon as I had recovered my breath sufficiently I drew myself up and reconnoitred the station. The train was just drawing out. Nobody seemed to have noticed anything.

I did not waste any time. I walked into Kline and found a peasant, who had a horse and carriage with which he was prepared to drive me to the next village in the direction of Moscow. It was about half past eight in the morning, when I left Kline, and using relays of horses from village to village I was in the outskirts of Moscow the same night. The night was dark, for which I was unfeignedly thankful. I rewarded my charioteer handsomely and watched him drive away, then walked briskly down the road into the city of the Terror.

Nobody was about. I had not the least idea where to go. The Cheremeteff Pereulok was barred to me, and it was impossible to say in what other of my accustomed haunts the blow would next fall. I was naturally extremely tired after the tedious day’s journey, and wanted rest confoundedly, but I dared not visit any of my friends, until after I had made a preliminary reconnaissance. The English, of whom a few had still been living in Moscow, would all be prisoners or fugitives at the consulate.

At last I decided to billet myself upon a White Russian, whose name and address I knew, but who personally was quite unacquainted with me. He was to have been one of Judenitch’s provisional army, but otherwise was not deeply compromised, and accordingly might well have escaped suspicion. He was some sort of distant relation of Dagmara, who had reported well of him, and accordingly I was not so diffident as I might otherwise have been in trusting myself to his mercy.

Everything was silent as I slipped up the untidy litter strewn stairs of the house, and rattled at his door. People do not sleep soundly in Russia. I had but a minute to wait before steps shuffled up to the door, which was opened about half an inch, and a woman’s voice, hoarse with agitation, asked, ‘Who is there?’