No sooner had Yakovlev started on the terrible rush of 160 miles over bogs and rivers running deep water over breaking ice to Tiumen than the Jewish conclave in Ekaterinburg received its orders--to stop the travellers at all costs. Omsk was at once “stampeded” by the false statement that Yakovlev was trying to arrange a rescue. Yakovlev was really seeking to escape the North Ural net by taking the south Ural route. He did not have to go through Omsk at all, but to change from the Perm on to the Samara line. There was no escaping out of the country by that route then. It could lead only to Moscow. Nevertheless, this train was turned back to Ekaterinburg. Sverdlov did not really want the Romanovs to go further. He could not afford to quarrel openly with his former paymasters, but he was probably shrewd enough and sufficiently well informed to suspect their secret designs. The talk of a trial in Moscow did not begin till much later, when Moscow rumour reported the Tsar as already defunct, and solely as an antidote to those rumours, as they threatened to upset the plan of murder. Sakovich, formerly surgeon in a hussar regiment and ex-ultra-monarchist, appertained to the Ural Regional Sovdep as Komisar of Health. He deposed afterwards that he had overheard Goloshchekin, Safarov and Voikov discussing with Beloborodov the alternative of wrecking the train with Nicholas Romanov or of “arranging” an accident. In the former case, the responsibility would be placed on “counter-revolutionaries” trying to effect a rescue. He did not listen to all the details as it did not concern his department. But the Jews did not have to carry out the plan then. The Germans were still in favour of the survival of Nicholas. The idea was utilised some months later at Alapaevsk. I have a copy of the message sent afterwards to Moscow and Petrograd in which the murderers seriously describe the “rescue” staged by them after the murder as having been the cause of the grand ducal “disappearance.” The Romanovs were suffered to live. A German mission (ostensibly Red Cross) came to Ekaterinburg at the end of May to ascertain all about the life of the “residents of Ipatiev’s house,” as the Imperial prisoners were officially styled. These spies went straight to Berlin with their report. The Red Kaiser knew full well what torments were being endured by those whom he had professed to cherish, who after all were his kith and kin. He could have saved them at any time. But ... they would not be saved by him.... Mirbach’s death did not, perhaps, introduce any modification of the plan of slaughter. He was assassinated one week before the event. The Bolsheviks declared that his death was an act of provocation committed by their Socialist opponents and gravely resolved that they must not quarrel with Germany, because that would only be playing into the hands of the assassins. This solemn farce had a deeper meaning.