However, after great difficulties, for the roads are very bad, the motor-wagon reaches the clearing. The bodies are placed on the ground and partly undressed. It is then that-the commissaries discover a quantity of jewellery that the Grand-Duchesses carry concealed under their clothes. They at once seize them, but, in their haste, let a few fall on the ground, where they are trodden into the soil. The bodies are then cut in pieces and placed on great bonfires, which are made to burn more fiercely by the application of benzine. The parts which resist the flames are destroyed with sulphuric acid. For three days and three nights the murderers toil at their labour of destruction under the direction of Yourovsky and his two friends Ermakof and Vaganof. One hundred and seventy-five kilogrammes of sulphuric acid and more than 300 litres of benzine are brought to the clearing.
At last, on July 20th, all is finished. The murderers efface all traces of the fires, and the ashes are thrown into a mine-shaft or scattered about the neighbourhood of the clearing, so that nothing may reveal what has taken place.
Why did these men take so much trouble to efface all traces of their deed? Why, since they professed to be acting as the servants of justice, did they hide like criminals? And from whom were they hiding?
It is Paul Medvedief who explains this in his evidence. After the crime Yourovsky came up to him and said, “Keep the outside sentries at their posts in case there is trouble with the people!” And during the following days the sentries continued to mount guard round the empty house as if nothing had happened, as if the fences still shut in the prisoners.
[Illustration: M. SOKOLOFF EXAMINING THE ASHES OF THE FIRE NEAREST TO THE MINE-SHAFT.]
[Illustration: M. SOKOLOFF EXAMINING THE TRACES OF ONE OF THE FIRES AT THE FOOT OF AN OLD PINE.
Those who must be deceived, must not know, are the _Russian people_.
Another fact proves this: the precaution taken on July 4th of sending away Avdief and the Russian guard. The commissaries no longer had confidence in these workmen from the Sissert workshops and the factory of Zlokazof, who had, however, rallied to their cause and enlisted voluntarily to guard “bloody Nicholas.” They knew that none but paid assassins, convicts, or foreigners would consent to carry through the infamous task they were proposing. These assassins were Yourovsky (a Jew), Medvedief, Nikouline, Ermakof, Vaganof, Russian convicts, and seven Austro-Germans.