Page:Lars Henning Söderhjelm - The Red Insurrection in Finland in 1918 - tr. Annie Ingebord Fausbøll (1920).djvu/146

 delinquents are to be arrested," it was resolved by the General Staff of the Red Guard.

A Commission for the Investigation of Murder and other Outrages committed in Helsingfors and Environs during the Revolution was now appointed, i.e., not until the 13th February. The murderers had had ample time to disappear! The work of the Commission gives the following result: About the murderers of Doctor Schybergson nothing is known. Information had been communicated to the Red Guard, from which it appeared that at the same hospital in which he was doing service there was a head nurse, Mrs. Blom, in whose rooms members of the Protective Corps used to meet. A big troop of Red Guardsmen were sent to the hospital. They rung the bell of Schybergson's door, and enquired for Mrs. Blom. But now a calamity occurred. The Red were not able to pronounce the name properly, as there is no "b" sound in the Finnish language. They thought they could perceive a note of scorn in the voice of the young physician when in answer to their very stuttering question, due to the difficulties of pronunciation, he replied: "There is nobody but I living here." The Red then retired, but, feeling rather cheap at the meagre result, on their way home they recollected the hint of a smile on the physician's face, and they turned back. They searched the house, took Schybergson with them, shot him, and rifled the dead body.

The murder of Mikkola gave the Commission more trouble, for here there was no question of an unpremeditated act. The author of the military petition, the anti-militarist Labour Party's hated "war-Antti," had been put out of the way on account of his parliamentary activity. A murder of revenge, that is to say. The evidence really reveals nothing until the rumour gets abroad that a certain Red captain has fallen at the front.