"But he is no traitor. He is as patriotic as you are yourself, Father! He has ever been so," cried the despairing woman.
"I have no means of knowing that," he replied in a hard voice, gazing at her with those strange, wide-open eyes, and endeavouring to put that spell upon her that few women could resist. "Nevertheless, I will forgive you, and, further, I will exercise my influence to save your husband"s life if you will consent to enter the circle of our holy disciples."
The desperate young woman held her breath for a few seconds, staring at him wildly as upon her knees she still knelt, clutching the "saint"s"
dirty hands.
"No," she replied. "That I will never do."
Rasputin saw that his plot had failed. Here at least was one woman over whom he was powerless, one who regarded him as a fraud. In an instant he flew into a sudden rage.
"Enough!" he cried, throwing her off. "You refuse to accept my condition--therefore your husband shall die!"
The wretched woman, her countenance pale as death, tried to speak. Her lips moved, but no sound came from them. Next moment, by dint of supreme effort, she struggled to her feet and rose stiffly. Then, a moment later, her hands clenched and despair in her splendid eyes, she turned and staggered out.
Four hours later Colonel Svetchine boldly faced a firing-party in the yard of the fortress. There was a word of command, and next second the gallant soldier fell forward on his face--dead.
CHAPTER X
TRAITOROUS WORK
THE true story of the tragic death of a Russian civil servant named Ivan Naglovski, and of the mysterious explosion which destroyed the great munition works at Okhta and killed over four hundred and fifty persons and injured seven hundred, has never been told.
There have been sinister whisperings in Russia, but I am here able to unfold the amazing truth for the first time.
I had accompanied Rasputin to the Verkhotursky Monastery at Perm; the house in the Gorokhovaya was closed, its wooden shutters were fastened, and the Empress was desolate without her "holy Father." Sturmer, the Prime Minister, was with the Emperor, daily plotting and striving for the betrayal of our nation to the Germans, and "Satan in a silk hat"--as one of the Grand Dukes had nicknamed the Minister of the Interior, Protopopoff--had gone on a mission to London, ostensibly in Russian interests, but really as a spy of Germany. The latter was, of course, not known at the time, for the British Government sent him on a tour of munition and other centres, showed him what they were preparing, and feted him in London as the representative of their ally. We now know that, on his return to Petrograd, he at once became violently anti-British, and made a full report of all he knew to the Wilhelmstra.s.se!
The purpose of the monk"s pilgrimage to Perm was to form a branch of his believers in that city. He had left Petrograd dressed as a pilgrim, with hair-shirt and staff complete, and as such he posed to everybody. The world, however, did not know that the rooms allotted to him in the monastery by the rascally bishop, whom he had himself appointed, were the acme of luxury, and that in them he held drunken orgies every night.
After we had been there three weeks an Imperial courier brought him a letter from Peterhof. It was night, and the monk was in an advanced state of intoxication with his companions, three other mock-pious rascals like himself.
When I handed him the letter he glanced at the Imperial cipher on the envelope, and, grinning, exclaimed:
"It is from the Empress. Read out what the woman says."
I hesitated, suggesting that it would be better if I read it to him in private.
"Bah!" he laughed. "There is nothing private in it. Read it, Feodor."
So, thus ordered, I obeyed. The letter was written in Russian, but with mistakes in grammar and orthography, for the Empress had never learned to write Russian correctly. These are the words I read for the delectation of the dissolute quartette:
"HOLY FATHER,--Why have you not written? Why this long dead silence when my poor heart is hourly yearning for news of you and for your words of comfort?
"I am, alas! weak, but I love you, for you are all in all to me.
Oh! if I could but hold your dear hand and lay my head upon your shoulder! Ah! can I ever forget that feeling of perfect peace and blank forgetfulness that I experience when you are near me.
"Now that you have gone, life is only one grey sea of despair.
There was a Court last night, but I did not attend. Instead Anna [Madame Vyrubova] and I read your sweet letters together, and we kissed your picture.
"As I have so often told you, dear Father, I want to be a good daughter of Christ. But oh! it is so difficult. Help me, dear Father. Pray for me. Pray always for Alexis [the Tsarevitch].
Come back to us at once. Nikki [the Tsar] says we cannot endure life without you, for there are so many pitfalls before us. For myself, I am longing for your return--longing--always longing!
Without our weekly meetings all is gloom----"
Here I broke off. What followed ought, I saw, not to be read aloud to that trio, who might at any moment turn to be enemies of the Starets.
"Yes," he said, smiling in gratification. "The woman evidently misses me.
It places a woman in her proper position to discard her for a while," he added with a drunken laugh. "What else does she say?"
"Only that they are due to go to Yalta, but that Her Majesty awaits your return," I replied.
"Then let her wait. I am very comfortable here. Perm is pleasant as a change."
I knew well that he was enjoying himself hugely and had already formed a great circle of hysterical women who believed in his divinity and practised the rites of his disgraceful "religion."
The final words of that amazing letter, which in itself showed the terms upon which Alexandra Feodorovna was with the convicted horse-stealer from Pokrovsky, were as follows:
"Here, O dear Father, we have only the everlasting toll of war!
Germany is winning--as she will surely win. She must. You will see to that! But we must all of us maintain a brave face towards our Russian public. In you alone I have faith. May G.o.d bring you back to us very soon. Alexis is asking for you daily. We are due to go to Yalta, but shall not move before we meet here. I embrace you, and so do Nikki and Anna.--Your devoted daughter, ALIX."
The unkempt quartette, treating the Empress"s expressions of affection as a huge joke, filled their gla.s.ses with champagne and drank heavily again, while Rasputin began to regale his "saintly" companions with stories of the intimate life of the pro-German Empress.
Truly, it was a gay, dissolute life that the verminous rascal was leading at the Verkhotursky Monastery, and many were the women over whom he exercised his weird, uncanny fascination.
"Believe in me and you will receive G.o.d"s blessing," was his constant blasphemous declaration to every woman whose looks were even pa.s.sable.
"Doubt me and you will be d.a.m.ned."
By Russia"s millions in the provinces he was looked upon as the holy man sent by G.o.d to the Tsar. Did not the "saint" eat at the Emperor"s table, and did he not prompt His Majesty in fighting the Germans? None ever dreamed that the unkempt miracle-worker, whose fascination for women was so astounding, was the secret amba.s.sador of the a.s.sa.s.sin of Potsdam.
Two of those companions of his nightly drinking bouts at Perm were named Rouchine and Yepantchine, brawny fellows whose evil life was almost as notorious as Rasputin"s. Rouchine had been a conjurer before he adopted a "holy" life, and by reason of his knowledge of magic and illusions he frequently a.s.sisted the Starets in performing those "miracles" that so astounded the mujiks who witnessed them with open mouths.
Whenever things grew a little dull, or Rasputin believed that his divinity was being doubted, he would calmly announce:
"I have had a vision. Last night the Holy Virgin appeared unto me and declared that I must again perform a miracle so that the world should be made aware that G.o.d, through me, is protecting our dear nation Russia."
Instantly the news would spread from mouth to mouth--Rasputin"s name being forbidden to be mentioned in the newspapers--that the Starets was about to perform a miracle, and thousands would a.s.semble in some open place, where one of Rouchine"s conjuring tricks would be performed.
By this time so deeply had Rasputin corrupted the Russian Church in its centres of power and administration that half the highest ecclesiastical dignitaries were of his creation, his fellow-thief in Pokrovsky having been appointed to a bishopric.
Very naturally, Rasputin had made many enemies. His overbearing vanity, his relentlessness in dealing with any who stood in his path, and the exposure of his use of _agents-provocateurs_ in securing the conviction and imprisonment of anyone who displeased him, had aroused against him a fierce hatred in certain quarters both in Petrograd and Moscow. Many of those who had sworn to be avenged were wronged husbands and fathers, a number of whom it had been my duty to endeavour to pacify even at personal risk to myself as the rascal"s secretary.
It was while at Perm that Rasputin received news that a man named Ivan Naglovski had been in Pokrovsky busily inquiring into his past, and interviewing his sister-disciples who were living there. Further, it was reported that he had been in communication with the monk Helidor, a man named Golenkovski, whose young wife was a "disciple" in Petrograd, and with Marie Novitski, who was preaching loudly against the erotic doctrine of the new "religion."
It was plain that Ivan Naglovski was a secret enemy.
Acting upon the monk"s instructions I returned to Petrograd, and at the headquarters of the Secret Police made application that Naglovski"s movements should be watched. Three days later I was a.s.sured that a small league of patriotic men and women had been formed, with Naglovski at their head, determined to unveil and unmask the traitorous rascal who was my employer.