Philip Proskuriakov--a youngster, the type of the good-natured peasant--deposed that he had entered the guard at Ipatiev’s house principally because he was curious to have a look at the Tsar; not because he felt hostile to him; indeed, if he disliked anybody it was the Jews. His narrative impressed the investigating magistrate by its evident sincerity. He did not see the actual murder, having spent the evening with some friends and taken copious draughts of “denaturat” (methylated spirits, which were in vogue since the prohibition of vodka) and as a result of these libations, Medvedev had placed him under arrest. He was locked up in the bath-house and sleeping off his “spree” when Medvedev came to wake him and order him to go into the house. The bodies had been taken out just before he reached the death-chamber. Everything that happened in the house immediately afterwards came under his personal observation. He washed the blood off the floor and the walls. That he positively admits. He discussed the details of the murder with Andrei Strekotin, one of the guards, who enjoyed Medvedev’s friendship and had been selected by him to stand at the lower-floor machine-gun post during the “execution.” This same Strekotin also related his observations to one of his brother-guards named Letemin, arrested later and found to be in possession of a whole collection of valuables belonging to the family and Alexis’s spaniel Joy (afterwards brought to England). Letemin’s version agreed with Proskuriakov’s rendering of the Strekotin eye-witness account. What is still more important, Proskuriakov heard also Medvedev relate the story of the killing. Medvedev told it to all the guards who with Proskuriakov were washing the floor:--“Pasaka (Pavel--_i.e._, Medvedev) himself related that he had loosed off two or three bullets at the _Gosukar_ (the Lord--_i.e._, the Tsar) and at other persons.... I am telling the honest truth. He did not say anything at all about his not having fired himself on account of being sent outside to listen to the shots.... That is a lie!” One pathetic incident escaped the notice of all these witnesses. The Grand Duchess Anastasia took with her a King Charles spaniel, carrying it in her arms into the death room. The corpse of little Jemmy was found above a heap of cinders--all that remained of the family that had loved her and shared with her their meagre fare. The murderers had knocked the faithful friend on the head and thrown the body down the iron-pit without troubling to burn it. Even in her death the little dog watched over them, and her mangled remains, still recognizable, brought final unmistakable proof of the end of the family. CHAPTER X “WITHOUT TRACE”