The terminus, and the night train too, seethed with people, but the Daimler was met by a detachment of military police who cut a way for me and my baggage through teeming masses of soldiers and sailors of all ranks who were bidding farewell to wives, sweethearts and children. Any man who travelled on the wartime trains will recall how dense the crowds were and how uncomfortable the conditions. Already, as I proceeded along the platform, I could see that even the corridors were crowded.
'Here, sir,' the Daimler's driver said, laying a hand upon my arm; our small party halted beside a first-class carriage two back from the engine. A door was opened for me, and I found myself entering what, in a ship, might be described as a small stateroom: possessed of bed, two comfortable seats and a tiny bathroom-cum-lavatory. The driver, entering behind me, drew down blinds on the corridor windows.
'No one will disturb you now.'
'But this is unfair!' I protested. There were many brother officers on the train, men bound for Scapa Flow and the hardship of duty at sea, who now faced a night and a day of discomfort in this jammed train, while I travelled in comfort.
'You are to have privacy, sir,' said he, shaking his head. 'Those are my orders.'
'From Mr Zaharoff?'
He did not answer, and was already backing out of the compartment. 'Safe journey, sir,' he said, touching his cap, and was gone.
A minute or two later I heard a whistle, followed by a great belch of steam and the sound of the wheels skidding for grip upon the rails. The train was moving, and I was off. I divested myself of hat and overcoat, hung them in the wardrobe, and flung myself into one of the two seats. So much had happened in so short a space that my mind was in turmoil, and I wanted only to sit quietly and seek to unravel the astounding events which, in a single evening had turned me from an officer on leave, with nothing before him but a day or so of rest, into the Emissary of my King, sent to encounter the bloodiest revolutionary alive and thence to the rescue of the once-mighty monarch of all the vast lands of Russia! In an attempt to focus my kaleidoscopic thoughts and fancies, I put my hand to my pocket for cigarettes, and then swore, for the pocket was empty. I could recollect, on considering the matter, that the packet had lain on the table at Jameson's club when I was called to see Stott. A night without tobacco, when so much was swirling through my head, was unpleasant to contemplate.
* * *
Mention of tobacco drew Horace Malory's attention to the fact that his own cigar was out. He, too, swore—though mildly and under his breath. Disliking both waste and relitcigars, he tossed the stub irritably into the large silver ashtray on his desk, an ashtray which commemorated the victory of his first racehorse, Sir Basil, over a long-ago mile at Newbury, and busied himself extracting another Romeo No.3 from its aluminium tube. When it was lighted, he closed his eyes for a minute or so to rest them, and then resumed reading.
How they knew, I cannot tell, but when, in search of refreshment, I opened the hamper, its wickerwork branded with the name of the provision merchants Fortnum & Mason, I found that it contained a plentiful supply of cigarettes, all of them Player's Navy Cut, the make I favoured. Also there were several boxes of lucifers. I lit up with a feeling of relief, and unwrapped one of the several napkins within the hamper to find cold chicken legs therein. Two bottles of a chilled Bernkasteler Mosel of excellent quality lay invitingly in the hamper. I would make my supper, I decided, and consider my position afterwards. Twenty minutes later, having disposed of a dish of the most delicate strawberries (and where could they have come from, in the month of March?) I lit another cigarette and looked again at the papers in my pocket. The passport, the first I had possessed, (since up to the outbreak of hostilities no Englishman abroad had need of such frivolities) contained my photograph. Whence had that been obtained? From the Navy, no doubt, though I could not recall being photographed for years except for snapshots taken by the occasional friend. Still, there it was: 'We, Arthur Balfour, His Majesty's Principal Secretary for Foreign Affairs, command . . .' I wondered to myself how far Balfour's writ might run in a Russia crowded with armies: the Whites, the Czech Legions, the Reds themselves, and the Germans, too! The letters I placed to one side; my orders were to bear them unopened, and though even then I had misgivings, if King George believed that they might save his cousin's family then who was a mere Navy commander to question such matters?
I concentrated my attention on the paper Zaharoff had handed to me as 'Your route'. Nothing written there was in any way surprising, save the final words: 'Proceed henceforward at, and with, discretion.'
Finally, having finished my bottle of Mosel, I undressed and slept. Late the following afternoon, in darkness, the train came to Thurso and I reported, as instructed, to the Navy Transport office, and thence aboard the transport vessel which was to make a bitter, stormy crossing of the Pentland Firth. Of that short journey I remember little, spending most of it green with sickness at the ship's rail ridding myself of chicken legs, strawberries, wine and much else as the small vessel plunged and heaved its way across that vile and narrow Pentland channel between the north coast of Scotland and the Isles of Orkney.
Fortunately for me, the crossing was accomplished in little more than a cheerless two hours. At Scapa Flow I again presented myself to a Movements Officer, and was at once ordered into a barge - an admiral's barge, no less - for immediate transportation aboard the destroyer HMS Airedale, which I could see already had steam up. No sooner was I aboard than I was shown to the First Lieutenant's cabin and the low, fast warship weighed anchor.
Next day I landed at Bergen, and proceeded by train to Oslo on what must be the most exquisitely beautiful rail journey on earth, and thence, again by train, to Stockholm. In Stockholm I had time only for a good dinner, which I took at the Grand Hotel in the belief that it might be some time before I could enjoy another such, and then boarded the ferry for Helsinki. Now my mood was beginning to change, as every mile brought me closer to a land I had loved since childhood, but a land whose mood could likewise change, in a second's caprice, from warm good nature to sullen, cold and cruel brutality. From Helsinki I again took train. And now my ears were filled with the accents of the Baltic and of Northern Russia. The time of Mosel and chicken legs, of private compartments and deference, though only a day or two behind me, might never have existed. On that journey I slept cramped on a wooden bench, dined off black bread, a little cheese and tea from a samovar, without lemon, and woke as the train rolled in to the Finland station in St Petersburg to find that name had been erased from the station platforms. Nothing, I think, could have so emphasized that the Russian world would now be unfamiliar to me, as those painted boards bearing the word Petrograd. The city was filled with activity, doubt and confusion. I went first, and on foot because I deemed it wise to avoid unnecessary contact, to the Smolny Institute, which in my St Petersburg days had been the finest of girls' schools, but was now, since October, the headquarters of the new Soviet of Peoples'
Commissaries. Its gracious, pillared entrance now stood decorated with machine-guns and a ferocious-looking but clearly dispirited band of revolutionaries. In several discreet conversations I gradually learned the reasons. The Government had taken itself off to Moscow so St Petersburg, as the cradle of the Revolution, now felt spurned. There was little love lost, then as later, between the two cities. And now even Trotsky, who had remained two weeks and more after the rest, had departed. The guards at the Smolny had nothing left to guard. 'Except our backs!' I was told sourly.