THE REVELATION.
Every resident in the capital was being scanned and spied after, and
every house-porter was kept peeking and seeking and reporting at the
police station of his precinct. The railway stations were teeming with
spies and a system was introduced by which every hack-driver was
expected to spy on his fare. The effect of it all was that the great
majority of St. Petersburg's population was in a state of unspeakable
terror. Curiosity, pity and everything else had given way to a nervous
feeling of self-preservation. People walked through the streets hastily.
The sight of a policeman was enough to send a twinge of fright into the
heart of the most loyal government clerk; everybody was afraid of
everybody else. One avoided to utter such words as "Czar," "police,"
"government." As to the Nihilists, one literally dreaded to think of
them. People who had never had a liberal thought in their brain were
tremulous with distrust of their own souls.
And through all this all-pervading panic Clara was busy posting
revolutionary proclamations in the streets, distributing tracts among
students and working-people, keeping "business" appointments with her
"illegal" friends. Pavel, in his turn, had all he could do to attend to
the needs of some of the out-of-town "circles." The revolutionists
throughout the country were clamouring for information, for
proclamations, for speakers; so that the seventy or eighty men and women
who formed the innermost organisation were as feverishly busy in their
way as the police and the gendarmes were in theirs.
The authorities were ransacking the capital for Nihilists in general and
for the cheesemonger couple in particular, but during the first few
hours following the two explosions their eagerness was centered on the
man who had thrown the fatal bomb. The search for that man soon proved
superfluous, however.
The civilian who was picked up unconscious near where the Czar was
stricken down had been taken to a hospital. Late in the evening he had a
brief interval of consciousness.
"Who are you?" an officer then asked him.
"I don't know," he answered. He had a relapse from which he never awoke.
The front of his body, particularly the inner side of one arm, was
covered with ghastly wounds, from which experts inferred that at the
time of the explosion he could not have stood more than three feet from
the Czar. This, according to some eye-witnesses of the catastrophe, was
the distance between the deceased monarch and the man who threw the
second bomb. After two days of searching and sniffing the police
discovered the unknown man's lodging, where they found some
revolutionary literature and other evidence that pointed to him as the
author of the fatal explosion. He had stood so close to the Czar that it
was impossible for him to make a target of his victim without making one
of himself. His real name still remained unknown.
As to the first bomb-thrower, he proved to be a college student named
Rysakoff. In the hands of the gendarme officers and the procureur he
broke down and told all he knew; but it appeared that he knew very
little. He had been one of a number of volunteers who offered to attack
the Emperor under the command of Zachar. When Zachar's arrest became
known to the Executive Committee things had begun to be rushed. Sophia
Perovskaya, the ex-governor's daughter, had taken his place, and it was
decided to make the assault without delay. Zachar had been arrested on
Friday evening. As it was known to Sophia that the Czar would visit the
Riding Schools on the next Sunday, the attempt was fixed for that
occasion. The Terrorists immediately connected with the plot held their
gatherings at a "conspiracy lodgings" kept by a man and woman Rysakoff
did not know. There the volunteers met Sophia and one of the inventors
of the self-igniting shell (the man with the priestly face whom we saw
at the meeting of the Executive Committee at which Clara's wedding was
to be celebrated). On Sunday morning (the day of the assassination) the
volunteers--three college men and an artisan--called at the same
gathering place. They found two finished bombs there and soon Sophia
arrived with two more. Where the bomb factory was Rysakoff did not know.
Sophia explained that it took a whole night to make the four portable
machines and that more than four volunteers could not be accommodated.
She then drew a rough map of the Czar's expected route, with four dots
for the posts of the four bomb-throwers. There were two sets of dots on
the diagram. In case the Czar failed to include Little Garden Street in
his route, the Terrorists were to shift their positions to Catharine
Canal and two neighbouring streets.
That afternoon, as Rysakoff stood on his post near Little Garden Street,
Sophia passed by him, her handkerchief to her nose (the same sort of
signal which the same young woman had given a year and a half before to
the man who fired the mine which blew up the imperial train near
Moscow). That meant that the Czar was not passing through Little Garden
Street. Accordingly, Rysakoff hastened over to Catherine Canal. There,
after he had thrown the bomb and while the Czar was speaking to him, he
saw the three other volunteers each on his post.
The second bomb-thrower was known to Rysakoff under the name of "the
Kitten." His real name he did not know.
He also gave the police the address of the "conspiracy lodgings," which
were located on the sixth floor of a house on Waggon Street, and an hour
or two later, at midnight, two days after the killing of the Czar, the
procureur, accompanied by gendarmes and police, knocked at one of the
doors of that apartment.
"Who is there?" a masculine voice asked from within.
"Police and the procureur."
"What do you want?"
"Open the door at once or we'll break it down."
While they were raining blows on the door, a succession of pistol shots
was heard within. Another door flew open, at the end of the corridor,
and a woman made her appearance.
"We surrender," she said. "Pray send for a doctor. Look out, don't pass
through this door. There are explosives there."
Inside they found the fresh corpse of a man lying in a pool of blood. It
was the gay poet; and the woman was Hessia Helfman, the dark little
Jewess with the frizzled hair who was married to Purring Cat. It was she
and the man now lying dead from his own pistol shots who had been in
charge of this "conspiracy lodgings." Among the things found in the
apartment were the two bombs which had been brought back from the scene
of the assassination; the rough map made by Sophia on the morning before
the attack and a large quantity of revolutionary literature.
The former "conspiracy lodgings" were now a police trap, and on the very
next morning it caught a big burly man whom Rysakoff identified as
Timothy Michailoff, the one mechanic among the four men who had been
armed with bombs on the fatal morning. Michailoff's memorandum book
furnished the police some important addresses, but the great surprise of
that eventful week did not come until the following day, March 17th, and
when it did it was anything but a source of self-congratulation to the
authorities.
About ten o'clock in the morning of that day the porters of the house on
Little Garden Street where the Koboseffs kept their shop reported to the
roundsman that the cheese dealer and his wife had not been home since
the previous evening, and that their shop was still closed. The
roundsman, who, like every member of the St. Petersburg police during
those days, was overworked and badly in need of rest, made no reply. An
hour later the porter accosted him again:
"The shop is still closed. Customers have been around and there is
nobody in."
"Oh, I have no time to bother about it."
"But I think I saw something in that store, some strange looking tools,"
pleaded the porter.
"The devil you did," the roundsman said, as much with irritation as with
amazement.
The statement was reported to the captain, who communicated it to his
superiors, until finally an order was obtained to raid the shop. A
search was made, more thorough than the first, and with quite different
results. The lounge in the living room upon which General Mrovinsky had
sat while speaking to Koboseff was found to contain a heap of earth, and
when the planks under the window of the middle room were removed--the
very ones which General Mrovinsky had made a feeble attempt to detach in
the presence of Koboseff and the police--a large yawning hole presented
itself to view. When this part of the wall had been torn down, the
aperture proved to be the mouth of a subterranean passage enclosed in
wood. Seven feet from the shop began a charge of a hundred pounds of
dynamite with an electric battery near by and wires running along the
gallery back to the middle room. Everything was in complete readiness.
All that was necessary to explode the mine was to connect the wires.
As was learned subsequently, this mine had been the leading feature of
the plot, the bombs having been added in case the Czar left Little
Garden Street out of his route or the mine failed of its deadly purpose
for some other reason. Of the existence of such a mine Rysakoff had not
the remotest idea until he heard of it at the trial.
* * * * *
On the Friday afternoon immediately preceding the arrest of Jeliaboff
(Zachar) the porter of the house where he and Sophia were registered as
brother and sister met them at the gate as they were leaving the house
together; and later, at 9 o'clock in the evening, he saw Sophia return
alone. The next morning, after Jeliaboff had spent his first night in
prison, the police, in their effort to discover his residence, ordered
every porter in the city to ascertain who of his tenants had been absent
from home that night. When the porter rang Sophia's bell that morning
there was no response. He reported it at the police station where he
was told to try again. At 2 o'clock he saw Sophia.
"I have received some blanks from the police," he said. "Every tenant
must state his occupation and place of business."
"My brother is working now," Sophia answered. "When he comes home I'll
tell him about it."
Two hours later she went out again, and in order to avoid passing the
porter at the gate, she gained the street through a little dry goods
shop that had a rear door into that yard, buying something for a
pretext. She came back, by way of the same dry goods shop, at 9 o'clock
in the evening and that was the last that was ever seen of her in that
neighbourhood. The next morning the porter reported the disappearance of
the couple.
When the police searched the deserted apartment they found a number of
revolutionary publications, several tin boxes like those which formed
the shells of the two exploding machines seized at the "conspiracy
house" kept by Hessia and the "gay poet," and several cheeses bearing
the same trade-mark as those in Koboseff's shop.
Meanwhile Jeliaboff had heard the solemn tolling of the bells in his
prison cell. In the excitement of the hour a gendarme on duty in the
prison corridor answered his questions through the peep-hole, in
violation of regulations. Jeliaboff at once sent word to the procureur,
assuming responsibility for the entire plot, as an agent of the
Executive Committee.
Sophia knew through a certain high official all that transpired between
Jeliaboff and the procureur. She knew that the authorities were turning
the capital inside out in their search for the woman who had lived with
Jeliaboff as his sister and for the Koboseff couple, yet in spite of all
the pressure the Nihilists brought to bear on her, persuading her to
seek temporary retirement, she, like Urie and Baska, remained in the
heart of St. Petersburg, in the very thick of her party's activity.
Clara saw her at a meeting during that week.
"You need rest, Sonia. You look tired."
"Do I?" Sophia answered with a smile. "So do you. Everybody does these
days."
Her smile was on her lips only. Her blue eyes were inscrutably grave,
but Clara saw a blend of lofty exaltation and corroding anguish in them.
She knew how dear Jeliaboff was to her. She had been craving to speak to
her of him, of Hessia and of the "gay poet," who had committed suicide
at the time of Hessia's arrest; but at this moment it was Sophia herself
who filled her mind.
"Sonia!" Clara said, huskily.
"What is it, child?" the other asked, kindly.
For an answer Clara looked her in the face, smiling shame-facedly. She
did feel like an infant in her presence, although Sophia, with her small
stature and fresh boyish face, looked the younger of the two. She did
not know herself what she wanted to say. She was burning to cover her
with kisses and to break into sobs on her breast, but Sophia was graver
and more taciturn than usual to-day, so she held herself in check. Her
passion for tears was subdued. She sat by Sophia's side absorbed in her
presence without looking her in the face, tingling with something like
the feeling of people in a graveyard, in a moment of solemn ecstasy.
Clara came away burdened with unvoiced emotion. She said to herself that
when she saw Pavel she would find relief in telling him how she adored
Sophia and how thirsty her heart was because she had not unbosomed
herself of these feelings to her; but when she and Pavel were alone she
said nothing.
* * * * *
The porters of the house from which Sophia had vanished were asked at
the police station whether they would be able to single her out in a
street crowd. They had to admit that they were not sure whether they
would. She had lived under their eye for eight months, but she had
always managed to pass through the gate, where they were usually on
duty, so as to leave no clear impression of her features on their minds.
Finally, on the sixth day, it was discovered that the proprietress of
the little dry goods store had a clear recollection of her face. This
woman, accompanied by a police officer, then spent hours driving about
through the busiest streets, until, with a shout of mixed joy and
fright, she pointed out Sophia in a public sleigh.
It was not many days before Kibalchich, the man with the Christlike
face, who was one of the inventors and makers of the four bombs, and
another revolutionist were arrested in a cafe, through an address found
in Timothy Michailoff's note-book.
* * * * *
The trial of the six regicides so far captured, Jeliaboff, Sophia,
Kibalchich, Hessia, Rysakoff, and Timothy Michailoff, was begun by a
special Court of the Governing Senate for Political Cases, on April 8.
That Purring Cat and the man with the Tartarian face, both of whom were
in prison now, had taken part in the digging of the Koboseff mine, was
still unknown to the police. Nor had the authorities as yet been
informed of the fact that another "political" in their hands--the
undersized man who had played the part of shop-boy to the
cheese-dealer--had had something to do with the same conspiracy.
Complete reports of the trial appeared in the newspapers, and the
testimony and speeches of the accused were read and read again.
Jeliaboff ("Zachar") declined a lawyer, taking his defence in his own
hands. His legal battles with the presiding judge, his resource, his
tact and his eloquence, made him the central figure of the proceedings.
He began by challenging the court's jurisdiction in the case. "This
court represents the crown, one of the two parties concerned," he said,
"and I submit that in a contention between the government and the
revolutionary party there could be only one judge--the people; the
people either by means of a popular vote, or through its rightful
representatives in parliament assembled, or, at least, a jury
representing public conscience." Declarations of this kind, Kibalchich's
narrative as to how the blind brutality of the government had
transformed peaceful social workers into Terrorists, and the effect of
simple, dignified sincerity which marked the conduct of all the
prisoners produced such a profound impression, that at the time of the
next important political trial scarcely any reports were allowed to be
published.
The six regicides were sentenced to death, the execution of Hessia
Helfman, who was about to become a mother, being postponed and later
commuted. When the parents of Kolotkevich (Purring Cat) asked to be
allowed to bring up their son's child, the request was refused on the
ground that it was the child of two regicides and should be brought up
under special care. The result of this special care was that the child,
like its pardoned mother, soon died.
Sophia and the four condemned men died on the gallows, on a public
square. They were taken to their death on two "shame waggons," dressed
in convict clothes, each with a board inscribed with the words "criminal
of state" across his or her breast. The procession was accompanied by a
force of military large enough to conquer a country like Belgium. Sophia
was the first woman executed on Russian soil since 1719.