Knight Without Armour

At last came news that Omsk itself had been taken by the counter- revolutionaries. Khalinsk was then caught up in another sudden scurry of panic; military and civilian authority both made preparations to evacuate the town; stores and ammunition were packed and sent away west; and Baumberg’s speeches grew more and more tumultuous. Kashvin’s invented atrocity stories now began to trickle back with many elaborations; they drove the Red garrison to the highest pitch of fury, and this, in the absence of any convenient battlefield enemy, was vented upon the White captives in the prison.

One night the quarrelling between Baumberg and Vronstein came to a head. Difficulties had arisen over the provision of transport for sending certain of the prisoners to safer places—safer, that was, from White capture. Rather than run the risk of any being rescued by their friends, Vronstein was for a wholesale massacre; but this was too much for Baumberg. The two stormed and threatened each other, Vronstein declaring in the end that he would march at the head of his soldiers and take the prison by storm. As soon as he had left the commissary office, Baumberg turned to A.J. in his suddenly normal and placid way and said: “I do believe the fellow means it. He’ll have them all murdered before the night’s out. Andreyeff, I think you ought to go to the prison and get out the two women. Petrograd will be furious if they are slaughtered by those drunken hogs.” He added, a little pompously: “The women are both very important links in the chain of evidence against the enemies of the Revolution, and I have already received strict orders that they are to be taken care of. When the counterrevolution has been crushed, they are to be put on trial in Petrograd—I tell you that in confidence, of course.”

It was almost midnight when A.J. reached the prison. Even so soon there was in the atmosphere a queer feeling of impending terror; the prison-guards were nervous and inclined to question his authority. It was obvious that most of them, if only to save their own skins, would join with the soldiers in whatever bloodthirsty orgy was to ensue. A.J. sought Countess Vandaroff first; she was kept in an outlying part of the prison under semi-hospital conditions. As soon as the warder unlocked her door she sprang screaming out of bed and crouched in the furthest corner of the cell. A.J. began: “Do not alarm yourself, Countess, but get ready to move away at once. You are to be taken elsewhere.” Then, as he saw the warder’s eyes upon him, he knew that he had blundered. In the hurry of the moment he had called her ‘Countess’. Commissars had been degraded and private soldiers shot, he knew, for less than that. Perturbed by the possible results of his slip, he went on to the other woman’s cell. She was asleep and had to be awakened. He gave her the same message, but with careful omission of the forbidden word.

Waiting in the prison-hall for the two women to present themselves, he could hear the sound of shouting and rifle-fire from the barracks not far away. Intense nervousness had by this time communicated itself to warders and prisoners alike; all were wide awake and chattering, and A.J. wondered what might be in store for them during the next few hours.

Countess Adraxine appeared first; she had put over her shoulders a light travelling cloak that still retained a trace of its original fashionableness, and she carried a few personal belongings in a small bundle. In the presence of the guards he did not speak to her; they waited for a moment in silence, and then he despatched one of the guards to fetch Countess Vandaroff. A little later the guard returned with the astonishing news that the woman was dead. A.J. rushed to her cell; it was true. Mad with terror at the thought that she was to be taken away and shot, the woman had killed herself by a desperate and rather difficult method: she had stabbed herself repeatedly in the throat with an ordinary safety-pin, and had died from shock and loss of blood.