himself....  He was about to resume his seat when the report of a revolver resounded in our ears....  The brute on the floor, wallowing in his blood, was raised upon his elbows and firing recklessly....  After he had fired six rounds without apparent injury I drew my own revolver and fired deliberately INTO THE WALL....  The fellow slunk back to silence....  My prisoner and I followed the ladies out into the night, forgetting a jewel or two in our leisurely departure....  Out in the open WE DESCENDED into the old abandoned tunnel that formerly led from Ipatievs to the medical office of a foreign consulate a thousand feet away....”

[Footnote A:  Nicholas used “Petrograd,” not the German nomenclature.]

IX

WHAT IS LEARNED IN A SECRET TUNNEL

26.  The next entry is mystifying: 

“We are between the devil and the deep sea!... which gives me time to write....  The beastly tunnel has caved in midway in our passage....  It seems, from the roar overhead, that we are somewhere beneath the railroad tracks.  Yet there must be a vent somewhere, as there seems to be a draft of air through this passage....  The family are congregated off to the right, in a kind of stoping where the dirt has been removed, leaving a small room like one meets with in the Gogebic iron mines in Wisconsin and Michigan, back in the United States....  Our little electric bull’s-eyes come in handy just now....  With my bull’s-eye propped up on a sand-encrusted box I am noting down some things that must not be forgotten....  While trying to find a passageway out of this hole in the ground we gyrated back and forth for the last two or three hours until the women became exhausted....  Then my ‘prisoner’ and I returned to the mouth of the entrance.  There we heard a horrible row between the unruly brute we left on the floor and his wild-eyed fellow conspirators....  They accused him of DOUBLE-CROSSING THEM and making away with the treasure that they insisted should be theirs!

“...  He insisted that there was NO treasure EXCEPT the JEWEL he apparently was exhibiting....  We could hear, quite distinctly, a sullen voice saying:  ’I do not believe you; you are trying to steal the whole of it!...  We’ll give you ten minutes to produce ALL you have hid away, and if you don’t do it, we’ll fill your body so full of lead that your rotten carcass won’t float in the Kolunda.’...  The culprit replied:  ’Let me explain.  You remember that I was suspecting that interloper when I insisted on watching him; well, my suspicions were correct,—­he was a TRAITOR to our cause.  He was planning to steal away with his precious gang when I covered them with my pistol.  Then when I had the drop on them I made them open all of their trunks and boxes.  Nothing was found.  I felt sure they were holding out on me, so I took a shot at the kid.  The interloper made a dive at me.