I have carefully compared the names given above with the list of 164 persons mentioned in the _dossier_ as being implicated or even suspected of having acted any part whatsoever in the tragedy; I have perused the cognomens of the twenty-four members of the Ekaterinburg Sovdep presidium. There is not one name in the mock trial that even resembles any of them (one cannot possibly identify Yakhontov with Yurovsky); the very charge is farcical if one compares this report with the text of the official announcement of the “execution.” Alone Beloborodov’s name is familiar. He was nominally president of the Ural sovdep at the time of the murders. I explained his real position--that of a mere helot, a thieving workman, kept in office to serve as a screen for the rulers of Sovietdom. After the murders he was “promoted” to the Tsik, the highest honour of Sovdepia. But they do not stand on ceremony with Russian komisars in the land where Yankel Sverdlov rules, and we read of him in the _Pravda_ as being stigmatised as (1) a thief, and (2) a party to the very murder for which he was promoted--the very same appalling crime that Sverdlov had ordained--the stain whereof haunts the chieftains of the Soviet like a Nemesis, so that they utter things without sense. Besides, the Soviet of Moscow received a lion’s share of the loot! Between July 20th and 22nd it was taken from Ipatiev’s house and removed to the Red Metropolis. The Bolshevists were fleeing before the advance of the Siberian troops. Yankel Yurovsky, evidently in a hurry to leave Ekaterinburg, took farewell of the death-house on the night of the 19th. His driver thus describes the exodus. That night he had by Yurovsky’s orders called at the _chrezvychaika_, and thence conveyed two young men, one of them a Jew, to Ipatiev’s house, where Yankel was waiting. These youths went into the house and brought out seven pieces of baggage, among them being a black leather trunk covered with seals. When he had taken his seat in the vehicle, Yurovsky gave his orders to the young men:--“Set everything to rights. Leave twelve men on sentry duty and send the remainder to the station.” The guard at Ipatiev’s house remained till the 23rd, but even after that, on the 24th and 25th, some of the Russian ex-warders still visited the house. The Whites entered Ekaterinburg on the 25th, and occupied the house on the following day. CHAPTER XI DAMNING EVIDENCE Having established, with the evidence of accomplices and of the death-house, the fact that a murder had been committed, the investigating magistrate had to find the bodies or to show conclusively what had become of them; otherwise the whole case remained in doubt. This proved to be a task of immense difficulty.