Knight Without Armour

The second examination, however, was brutally stringent. The Reds were determined that no White sympathiser should escape, and it was altogether a matter of indifference to them whether, in making sure of that, they slaughtered the innocent. The fat-faced Jew, who appeared to be the inquisitor- in-chief, made this offensively clear. He took the male suspects first, and after a sneering and hectoring cross-examination, condemned them one after another. He did not linger a moment over the professor of philosophy. “You are a bourgeois—that is enough,” he snapped, and the man was hustled away towards a third group. When this grew sufficiently large, the men in it were arranged in line in a corner of the square and given over to the soldiery, who, no doubt, took it for granted that all were proved and convicted Whites. Then followed a scene which was disturbing even to A.J.’s hardened nerves. The men were simply clubbed and bayoneted to death. It was all over in less than five minutes, but the cries and shrieks seemed to echo for hours.

Many of the waiting women were by that time fainting from fear and horror, but Daly was still calm. She whispered: “I am thinking of what he said—that one hasn’t lived until one has faced death. Do you remember?”

The Jew adopted different tactics with the women. He wheedled; he was mock-courteous; doubtless he hoped that his method would make them implicate one another. With any who were even passably young and attractive he took outrageous liberties, which most of the victims were too terrified to resent, though a few, with ghastly eagerness, sought in them a means of propitiation. When Daly’s turn came, he almost oozed politeness; he questioned her minutely about her past life, her parents, education, and so on. Then he signalled a soldier to fetch him something, and after a moment the man returned with a large book consisting of pages of pasted photographs and written notes. The Jew took it and began to scrutinise each photograph with elaborate care, comparing it with Daly. This rather nerve-destroying ordeal lasted for some time, for the photographs were numerous. At last he fixed on one, gazed at it earnestly for some time, and then suddenly barked out: “You have both been lying. You are not a peasant woman. You are the ex-Countess Alexandra Adraxine, related to the Romanoffs who met their end at Ekaterinburg last July. Don’t bother to deny it—the photograph makes absolute proof.”

“Nevertheless we do deny it!” A.J. exclaimed, and Daly echoed him. “It is absurd,” she cried, with well-acted emphasis. “We are two poor people on our way to visit our friends, and you accuse me of being someone I have never even heard of!”

The Jew laughed. “I accuse you of being the person you are,” he said, harshly. “Stand aside—we can’t waste all night over you.”

The sensation of the discovery had by this time reached the ears of the soldiers, and had also attracted the attention of a small group of officers, among whom was the youth who had conducted the earlier interrogation. He hurriedly approached the Jew and whispered something in his ear, and for several moments a muttered discussion went on between them. Meanwhile the rank and file, fresh from their slaughter of the first batch of suspects, were waiting with increasing impatience for the next. “Let’s have her!” some of them were already shouting. The Jew seemed anxious to conciliate them; he said, loudly so that they might all hear him: “My dear Poushkoff, it would not be proper to treat this woman any differently from the rest. Women have betrayed our cause no less than men—especially women of high rank and position. The prisoner here may herself, if the truth were known, be responsible for the lives of hundreds of our soldiers. Are we to quail, like our predecessors, before a mere title?”

Poushkoff answered quietly: “Not at all, Bernstein—I merely suggest that the woman should not be dealt with before she is definitely proved guilty. After all, she may be speaking the truth, and it would be too had if she were to lose her life merely because of a slight resemblance to one of those exceedingly bad photographs that headquarters have sent us.”

“Slight resemblance, eh? And bad photographs? My dear Poushkoff, look for yourself.”

He handed the book to the other, who examined it and then went on: “Well, there seems to me only a slight resemblance such as might exist, say, between myself or yourself and at least a dozen persons in this town if we took the trouble to look for them. Frankly, it isn’t the sort of evidence on which I would care to condemn a dog, much less a woman. And we have this fellow’s statement, also—he sounds honest.”

“About as honest as she is, if you ask my opinion. We’ll attend to him afterwards.”

“I merely suggest, Bernstein, that the matter should be deferred for further investigation.”