21. "On the way here the HERO of Gallipoli took quite a fancy to me, because I could beat him swearing perhaps.... Growing confidential over his liquor and Turkish cigarettes he asked point-blank: 'Didn't I see you at the TWELFTH DAY CEREMONY at the Winter Palace the time the Archbishop lost the golden cross in the river, a few years ago?'... I thought it better to deny the acquaintance and the incident.... I could have easily recalled the ceremony on the Neva, the decorated pavilion on the ice in front of the palace, the procession of church dignitaries in their stiff Byzantine robes and scintillating mitres moving slowly across the road followed by the Grand Dukes and the Emperor, the clear voices of the choir cutting through the frosty air, the ladies of the Court standing near the window and crossing themselves as the Czar stood motionless beneath the gilded and fretted canopy,--_I could have recalled it all_ ... but I swore profanely and declared emphatically that ALL RELIGION WAS A COBWEB AND A SNARE to emancipated minds.... I pretended to get violently MAD about it and told him I would strangle any man who insulted me by accusing me of the most distant relationship with any religion excepting the religion of FREE LOVE.... He laughed like a lion with a sliver in its paw. 'You are _absolutely_ the best COUNTERFEIT in circulation that I know of!' he guffawed. 'Well, I'm going to fire Syvorotka and put you in charge of a little FIRING SQUAD when we get to our camping ground at Ekaterinburg!' were his exact words, half whispered, half insinuated and wholly growled across the table in the diner.... With assumed hostility I actually barked: 'The dirtier the deviltry the more diverting!'... He opened his eyes widely like one emerging from a solemn drunk and WINKED knowingly as he shook my hand.... 'You know where Kerensky got his orders to release our fellows, of course,' he whispered. 'I guess you KNOW why he sent _some people_ to Ekaterinburg a couple of days before the Czecho-Slovaks are scheduled to _take_ it, and I guess you know too how it happened that so many MOTOR TRUCKS came all the way from Archangel to Ekaterinburg so as to be on hand when a certain Indian officer shows up, the ridiculous ranter raved.... But...." "... If these lines should ever come to light I want to record right now, in justice to that apparently besotted creature, that I am under unutterable obligations to him for assigning to me the most diabolical piece of brutality that has been conceived during this period of moral leprosy and unrepenting malevolence.... _I shall do my work well_." 22. Then the following odds and ends appear: