Rasputin heard me through, and, taking the cipher message, applied a match to it, after which Hardt, having swallowed a gla.s.s of vodka, left us.
But the monk, as a result of that message, was at once aroused to evil activity, and by means of a clever ruse invited Ivan Naglovski to dinner next day. He accepted, hoping, of course, to discover more concerning the monk, and quite unconscious that Rasputin knew of his hostile intentions.
To dinner there were invited the Prime Minister, Boris Sturmer, and a sycophant of his named Sikstel. Sturmer was in uniform and Sikstel in civilian attire. Naglovski, I found, was a youngish man, who, when I introduced him, appeared highly honoured to meet at Rasputin"s table the Prime Minister of Russia, while the monk went out of his way to ingratiate himself with his enemy. Naglovski and his friends had been preparing a plot either to expose or a.s.sa.s.sinate the monk, hence the head of the conspiracy was congratulating himself that the plot was unsuspected by anybody.
The dinner pa.s.sed off quite merrily until, of a sudden, Sturmer, addressing his fellow-guest, said:
"News has been conveyed to the holy Father that you and your friends have formed a plot against him. Is that true?"
Naglovski started and turned pale. For a moment he was taken entirely off his guard.
"Ah!" went on Sturmer in his deep, thick voice, Rasputin having risen to go to the sideboard, "I see it is true. Now, what can you gain by endeavouring to belittle the efforts of our dear Father for the salvation of Russia? Think. Are you patriots? No. Well," he went on, "the reason the Father has invited you here to-night is to come to terms with you.
For a list of your friends--a secret list that will be afterwards destroyed--the Starets will pay you twenty thousand roubles, and, further, I will give you a diplomatic appointment in one of the emba.s.sies abroad--wherever you desire."
"What!" cried the young man. "You ask me to betray my friends to that blasphemous rascal!" and he pointed his finger at Rasputin, who moved aside. "Never! I refuse! And, further, I tell you," he shouted, rising as he spoke, "I intend to expose the mock-saint and his conjuring tricks; the criminal miracle-worker who, according to secret information I have just received, was the actual instigator of the terrible disaster at Okhta. This is what my friends, when I reveal to them the truth, will expose."
As Ivan Naglovski uttered his biting condemnation Rasputin had crept up behind him, and drawing his revolver suddenly cried in a loud voice:
"Enough! You don"t leave this house alive. Gregory Rasputin knows how to crush his enemies, never fear. All your friends will share your fate.
Take that!"
And he fired, the bullet striking the unfortunate man in the back, where it entered a vital spot.
Two hours later the body of Ivan Naglovski was discovered on some waste ground out at Kushelevka, on the other side of the city. Though the Director of Secret Police guessed what had occurred, he pretended that it was a complete and unfathomable mystery--and a mystery it has ever remained until this present exposure.
CHAPTER XI
POISON PLOTS THAT FAILED
BY the spring of 1916 Rasputin, though constantly revealing himself as a blasphemous blackguard, had become the greatest power in Russia.
His name was whispered by the awe-stricken people. All Russia, from the Empress down to the most illiterate mujik, accepted him as divine and swallowed any lie he might utter.
The weekly meetings of the "sister-disciples" were becoming more popular than ever in Petrograd society, and there were many converts to the new "religion."
One evening a reunion for recruiting purposes was held by the old Baroness Guerbel at her big house in the Potemkinskaya. The yellow-toothed, loud-speaking old lady had been persistent in her appeals to Rasputin to hold one of his meetings at her house, and he had, with ill-grace, acceded. On fully a dozen occasions the baroness, who was a close friend of old Countess Ignatieff, had interviewed me and endeavoured to enlist my services on her behalf. At last the monk had said to me:
"Well, Feodor, if the old hag is so very persistent, I suppose I had better spend an evening at her house and inspect her lady friends."
Thus it had been arranged, the "saint" little dreaming of the outcome of that fateful reunion.
It seems that Baroness Guerbel had arranged it because she wished to introduce to Rasputin a certain Madame Yatchevski--the wife of an officer who was very rich--who saw that, by Rasputin"s influence, she could aspire to a position at Court.
Olga Yatchevski proved to be a pretty, fair-haired little woman of girlish figure and sweet expression, and from the moment of their introduction the unkempt monk, after crossing himself and uttering a benediction, became greatly interested in her, the result being that she became an "aspirant," and her initiation into the secrets of the cult was arranged to take place on the following Wednesday.
The meeting ended, the dozen or so neurotic women, all of them of the highest society in the capital, each bent and kissed the unwashed hand of Russia"s "saviour," as was their habit, and when they had gone the monk sat down and drank half a bottle of brandy served to him by his ugly old hostess.
Next night I happened to be out at the theatre when Rasputin, who was alone, emerged to walk round to a professional blackmailer named Ivan Scheseleff, who lived in the Rozhsky Prospekt. Suddenly he was set upon by three Cossacks--afterwards found to have been men hired by Madame Yatchevski"s husband--who, hustling the "saint" into a narrow side street, gagged him, stripped him of the silk blouse embroidered by the Tsaritza"s own hands, his wide velvet breeches, and his beautiful boots of patent leather.
Then they drew a knout and administered to the rascal a sound drubbing, afterwards binding him with rope and shutting him up in a neighbouring stableyard, attired only in his underwear!
His clothes they packed up in a cardboard box and delivered to Yatchevski, who, having sealed it, sent it by special messenger to Tsarskoe-Selo, where it was delivered into the Empress"s own hands.
Alexandra Feodorovna, on having it opened and discovering the insult to her "holy Father," waxed furious. Meanwhile, Rasputin had been discovered, and was at home foaming at the mouth at the indignity. He, "the saviour of Russia," had been thrashed and degraded!
At two o"clock that morning he took a car to the palace, and I accompanied him. He had an interview with Her Majesty, who was attired in a rich dressing-gown of pale-blue silk, and the pair resolved upon a rigid inquiry regarding the affair.
"It is monstrous that you, our dear Father, should have such enemies about you! We will crush them!" she declared angrily. "I will see Nikki about it in the morning. To send me your clothes is a personal insult to myself. It is abominable! These people shall suffer!"
That night we remained at the palace, and next morning Protopopoff was called from Petrograd and informed by the Empress of what had occurred.
Later the Minister came to the room wherein I was writing at the monk"s dictation, and promised that the whole of the machinery of the Secret Police should be set in motion to discover the perpetrators of the outrage.
Rasputin knew that many of the husbands of his devotees were enraged against him; therefore he could not, at the moment, suggest any particular person who had plotted the affair, and probably the police would have failed to obtain any information had not Captain Yatchevski himself boasted in the Officers" Club of how he had had the Tsaritza"s pet "saint" stripped and thrashed.
In Petrograd the very walls had ears; therefore within three hours the "saint" knew the ident.i.ty of the instigator of the outrage, and gave his name to the Empress.
"We will make an example of him," she said. "Otherwise it may be repeated. I leave it to you, dear Father, to take what reprisals you wish. In any course you adopt you will have the full authority of both Nikki and myself."
For nearly a week Rasputin was undecided as to how he should wreak vengeance upon the unfortunate Yatchevski, whose wife had by this time become one of the monk"s most devoted "sisters."
On two or three occasions he went to the Minister of War and chatted with the traitor, General Soukhomlinoff.
Once he remarked to me, after a meeting of the "disciples" at our house in the Gorokhovaya:
"That captain shall pay--and pay dearly--for his insult! Think!--only think of it, Feodor--of sending my clothes to Her Majesty! What must she have thought! To me it seems that she doubts whether I can take care of myself. And am I not inspired, divine!--sent as the saviour of Russia, and immune from the attacks of mankind!"
His subtle mujik mind clearly saw the bad impression which must be produced upon the woman who was so completely beneath the thraldom of his hypnotic eyes. If he could be beaten as a charlatan, then such action of his enemies must naturally create a doubt in her mind. Hence he was scheming to exhibit his power.
The worst feature of the position was that from the Officers" Club the incident had leaked out all over Petrograd, until it had become common talk in the cafes. The story of Grichka sitting upon a dung-heap was on the lips of everybody, while a well-known member of the Duma remarked:
"A pity he was not buried in it, never to see the light of day again!"
Yatchevski was, of course, unconscious of the knowledge held by the monk.
He was at the Ministry of War, head of one of its many departments, a loyal patriotic Russian, who, like our millions, believed that Soukhomlinoff was "out to win." He was ignorant of the irresistible power which the dirty "saint" could wield.
One day, to Captain Yatchevski"s delight, he found himself raised in rank and appointed military commandant of the town of Kaluga, south of Moscow, with permission to take his wife to reside there. Naturally he was gratified to receive so influential an appointment. Though possessed of much money, he had hitherto not progressed very far in his official career, and this favour shown him by the Tsar, who had made the appointment, pleased him immensely.
His wife, of course, felt otherwise. She would be separated from her gay friends, the "sisters" of the monk"s "religion." Besides, she saw that by entering Rasputin"s cult there was a prospect of becoming on terms of personal friendship with the Empress.
Anyhow, a week later Olga Yatchevski, having bidden farewell to the monk, was forced to depart with her husband to the important town of Kaluga, and for a fortnight I heard nothing.
One morning, however, the monk received a certain General Nicholas Ganetski, of the Imperial General Staff, when, without much preamble, the officer remarked:
"The warning you gave us concerning Yatchevski has proved quite true. He has been in communication with a German agent in Riga named Kloss."
"Ah! I was quite certain of it, General," remarked the "holy" man, with a sinister grin. "I discovered it quite by accident. Well, what have you done?"