Led off on a false scent, the earlier investigator had neglected the unerring sagacity of the peasants and had even failed to make an immediate examination of the wood and pits--perhaps afraid to leave the city, because Red bands were reported to be in the neighbourhood. He was following the red-herring trailed by Soviet agents, that, to wit, the family had escaped or been removed. These agents did not know the truth themselves. They merely related what they had been instructed to say. The local Soviet had not known the facts. There had been no trial. The murders had been the work of a separate organization which directed everything from a distance. Misled by the versions thus spread, the investigator had lost himself in the maze of conflicting rumour in Ekaterinburg. When Sokolov took over the case--in the early months of 1919--it was almost at a standstill because of the initial mistakes and incapacity of the investigator. Yet evidence had come from another quarter that should have compelled him to take the right course. From one of the Imperial servants who had escaped from a Red shooting squad it became known that several grand dukes and the Grand Duchess Elizabeth had been murdered immediately after the Ekaterinburg shooting, and that some of the bodies had been found in disused iron pits. In no case had there been any semblance of a trial. It was evident the wholesale extermination of the Romanovs had been pursued, and that all theories of the miraculous survival of the children should be abandoned. CHAPTER II THE STAGE AND THE ACTORS Some idea of the crime of Ekaterinburg is now in the reader’s possession; but, in dealing with the evidence in all its aspects, it is necessary to give an account of conditions that prevailed in the country then, and of the chief actors in the drama. The murder of the Tsar and his family, even after his abdication, may not be regarded as a simple act of vengeance or casual precaution. In 1917, the Germans had sent Lenin with a horde of Jewish revolutionaries to take possession of Russia. A Red Government, composed of persons selected in Berlin, was now in power; but they were vassals. Count Mirbach, representing the suzerain State, figured in Moscow as the virtual ruler, before whom the apostles of Karl Marx bowed the knee. At the period under review, the Reds had displayed no overt disposition to throw off the German yoke. They conformed with all the humiliating clauses of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, dutifully sending the tribute gold to Berlin which had been demanded as “war indemnity,” plundering the national Exchequer and resources by order of their German masters. Apparently everything was going well with the German plan of “peaceful” conquest, whatever secret hopes the Red leaders may have nurtured. Instead of a redoubtable foe, Russia was now a willing handmaid.