That evening about six o'clock I called at Chesham House, the Russian Embassy, and obtained the signature of the Ambassador, Monsieur Grodekoff, to my passport. I did not, however, see Verblioudovitch, he being absent at Brighton, therefore I left the same evening for Flushing, and after a long and wearisome ride across Germany duly arrived at Verjbolovo, one of the principal gates of the great Russian Empire. The formalities troubled me but little, for I had passed the frontier on several occasions when stationed in St Petersburg. After getting my passport stamped I strolled up and down the platform gazing about over the flat, uninteresting country, contemplatively smoking a cigarette, and watching the crowd of tired, worried travellers experiencing the ways of Russian officialdom for the first time. Among them was an elderly Russian lady who, travelling with her three daughters, good-looking girls, ranging from eighteen to twenty-three, had omitted to have her passport vised by a Russian Consul outside the Empire. So stringent were the regulations that, although they were subjects of the Tzar returning to their own country, the officer would not allow them to proceed, and all four were detained while the passport was sent back to the nearest Russian consul in Germany to be "treated." At first it had occurred to me to travel on to St Petersburg, and there endeavour to learn from a police official of my acquaintance whether Sonia Korolenko had been heard of lately, but on reflection I saw that every precaution would no doubt be taken by her in order that the police should not be made aware of her presence in Russian territory. A strange vagary of Fate it seemed that through my own action in obtaining for her a false passport she had been enabled to escape, and that my own endeavours had actually thwarted my own ends. As I paced the railway platform, with the brilliant afterglow shedding a welcome light across that dead level country so zealously-guarded by the green-coated sentries in their black and white striped boxes, and Cossack pickets, each with his "nagaika" stuck in his boot, I remembered with failing heart how this woman, whose fame was notorious throughout Europe, had told me that once past this portal of the Tzar's huge domain all traces of her would be obliterated completely. This fact in itself convinced me that she had never intended to travel direct to St Petersburg, and it became impressed upon me that in order to trace her it would be necessary to first visit the little out-of-the-world town of Skerstymone, that was situated a long way to the north along the frontier. With that object I allowed the St Petersburg express to proceed, and after an hour's wait entered a local train, alighting at a small town euphoniously termed Pilwiszki, where I spent the night in an exceedingly uncomfortable inn.