About two in the morning there was a sudden commotion in the building below, and a Red officer, armed with two revolvers, rushed into the room with the brusque order that all refugees were to form up in the square outside for inspection, since it was believed that many White guards and bourgeois sympathisers were hiding in disguise amongst them.
The whole company, numbering between five and six hundred, were marshalled in long lines facing the town-hall front, where other groups of refugees were already drawn up. The procedure had a certain ghastly simplicity. Red officers, carrying lanterns, peered into the faces of each person, searching for any evidences of refinement such as might cast suspicion on the genuineness of identity. Hands were also carefully inspected. When A.J. observed these details he felt apprehensive, not on his own account, but on Daly’s. The examining officers, shouting furiously to those who from weakness or panic could not stand upright, were certainly not in a mood to give the benefit of any doubts. Those whose faces were not seared deeply from winds and rains, or whose hands were not coarse and calloused, stood little chance of passing that ferocious scrutiny. Slowly the group of suspects increased; the ex- professor of philosophy was among the first to be sent to join it. The officer who was examining those near A.J. was a coolheaded, trim young fellow much less given to bullying his victims than the rest, but also, A.J. could judge, much less likely to be put off by a plausible tale. He did not linger more than a few seconds over A.J.—that grim, lined face and those hands hardened by Arctic winters were their own best argument. At Daly, however, he paused with rather keener interest. A.J. interposed with the story he had prepared for the occasion—that she was his daughter, a semi-invalid, and that he was taking her to some distant friends by whom she might be better looked after. The officer nodded but said: “Let her speak for herself.” Then he asked her for her name, age, and place of birth—all of which had been agreed upon between A.J. and herself for any such emergency. She answered in a quiet voice and did not seem particularly nervous. That clearly surprised the questioner, for he asked her next if she were not afraid. She answered: “No, but—as my father has just said—I am ill and would like to be allowed to finish my journey as soon as possible.”
While the youth was still questioning her, another officer approached of a very different type. He was a small, fat-faced, and rather elderly Jew, glittering with epaulettes and gold teeth and thick-lensed spectacles. One glance at the woman was apparently enough for him. “Don’t argue with her, Poushkoff,” he ordered sharply. “Put her with the suspects—I’ll deal with her myself in a few moments.”
Poushkoff saluted and then bowed slightly to Daly. “You will have to go over there for a further examination,” he said, and added, not unkindly, to A.J.—“Don’t be alarmed. You can go with her if you like.”
They walked across the square, and on the way A.J. whispered: “Don’t be alarmed, as he said. We’ve come through tighter corners than this one, I daresay.” She replied: “Yes, I know, and I’m not afraid.”
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.”