Beasts in cassocks - End Time Deception

magistrate, who had held a similar position under the Czar's Gov-
ernment, examined me so rigidly as to make the inquest a series of
tortures. He summarily announced : "We have found your money/'
I replied that I was overjoyed at it. Then the "magistrate," pro-
secutor, ditsrict attorney, or what you will, asked: "To whom did
you give the money?" I carefully described what had happened, but
he struck me a violent blow on the face, clenched his fist, and shouted
"You lie ! Tell
me of your brother's whereabouts !" I answered that
1 had not heard from my brother for more than a year. To this the
brother is with the White Guards, you
district attorney stated : "Your
took the pane out of the window at night, and handed him the money.
Your brother has been arrested. We have found the money on him
and confiscated it. You, on the other hand, are sentenced to be shot."
I asked to be confronted with both my guard and my brother
who, according to the attorney, had been arrested. My request wa??
denied. Now it became clear to me that I was in the hands of Platon's
men who conspired to ruin me. After sentencing me to be shot, for
some reason or other they granted me a respite of forty-eight hours
for an appeal. I knew that the workmen in the factory who had
protested at the time of my arrest to my being taken to the "Che-Ka,"
would have objected to such a sentence. They believed me to be
their comrade, honest and just, and incapable of robbing them of their
money. They never expected me to be tried in this manner and so
summarily sentenced to death. It was impossible for me to notify
them and so I could not secure their help. I was taken back to prison,
and 47^ hours later they came for me and led me out to be shot.
I was under the convoy of two soldiers, a sailor and a Chinaman from
Manchuria. They brought me to a garden, told me to undress and
placed me facing the soldiers, with my back towards a freshly dug
trench. The Chinaman ordered me, in broken Russian, to confess my
business is to shoot but not to ex-
crime, and when I replied : "Your
amine," he ran to me and dealt me with the butt of his gun so heavy
a blow that I fell to the ground bleeding, and barely escaped being
killed. I regained consciousness in the same cell from which I had
been led to the execution. I lay there, naked and all covered with
blood, on the bare floor.
vSoon they came to me, and in spite of the fact that I could not
move, they again took me for a hearing. Another magistrate was sit-
ting now. If the soldiers had not supported me under the arms, 1
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