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I got the impression that if the imperial family had been taken away from Yekaterinburg, they must have been taken as they were, without any of their belongings. All the things they might have taken with them were burned. Nevertheless, at the time I left the house I could not believe that the imperial family had perished. It seemed to me that there was such a small number of bullet holes in the room I had inspected that everybody could not have been executed. When, a considerable time later, I returned from Yekaterinburg to Tumen, Volkoff called on me. I did not recognise him at first, as I had read in the newspapers that after the attempt on the life of Lenin, Hendrikova, Schneider and Volkoff were shot.

Volkoff told me that he was taken directly from the train and put in the Yekaterinburg prison. From this prison he, Hendrikova and Schneider were transferred to a prison at Perm. Tatischeff was also in prison in Yekaterinburg. He was once taken out of prison but was never put back. I could hardly understand from Volkoff’s words what happened to Tatischeff. Volkoff told me that he had seen in Tatischeff’s hands a written Bolshevik order commanding him to leave the Perm district. In the prison Volkoff was put in the same cell with the valet of the Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovitch. The valet said that when the grand duke resided in Perm, four armed men called on him late at night. One of them aimed his pistol at the valet and ordered him to stand still. The others told the grand duke that he had to follow them. The grand duke refused to obey their orders unless he were asked to do so by a member of the soviet personally known to him. In reply one of the armed men went up to the grand duke, took him by the collar and grumbled: “Here is one more of the Romanoffs.”