Rasputin, his eyes fixed upon his visitor, slowly nodded in the affirmative.
"That means ruin--perhaps imprisonment for me!" Hardt gasped, his face pale and anxious.
"I might say the same thing," remarked the saint, stroking his long, untrimmed beard. "But I do not. We are both strong enough to resist all attacks. Any suspicion against Mia.s.soyedeff must be removed. I will see that the Emperor promotes him to-morrow. Our one stumbling-block is Peter Stolypin."
"One that, I take it, must be removed?"
"Yes--at all costs. That is why the Empress has sought out this woman Baltz, who, if my estimate of her s.e.x is correct, is a wild firebrand."
"She certainly is viciously vindictive."
"One thing is certain, our friend Stolypin has no idea that he is seated on the edge of a volcano," remarked the monk. "He lives extremely happily with his wife and children in that beautiful villa over on the Islands of the Apothecaries, and has no suspicion of the coming storm. I promised his wife to go to her salon to-morrow night."
"And will you go?"
"Of course. There must be no suspicion. Are we not, all of us, his best friends?" asked the monk, grinning evilly.
"I am returning to Berlin by way of Stockholm on Thursday," Hardt said, for he gave as the reason for his frequent visits to Germany and Scandinavia that he bought leather in those countries. "Have you anything to report?"
"Yes. One or two things," replied the Starets, who ordered me to write at his dictation as follows:
"MEMORANDUM.
"FROM GREGORY TO NUMBER SEVENTY.
"Have acted upon your instructions regarding the Kahovsky affair.
Some important correspondence was seized by the police at his arrest, and for two days matters looked extremely unpromising. I paid T. twenty thousand roubles to close his lips, and induced the Emperor to release Kahovsky and restore his papers. I suggest that he should be recalled from Russia and sent to London, where, being unknown, he might be extremely useful to you.
"Madame Zlobine is at the Adlon Hotel in your city. She has quarrelled with the General, and strict watch should be kept upon her. She has been heard to express very decided views against Her Majesty. It may be found that she is in communication with J. If so, it is in the interests of Stolypin"s anti-German campaign!
"Hardt will explain verbally the position of the latter, and the discovery of the woman Baltz. Meanwhile His Excellency is unsuspicious that we are aware of his hostile intentions towards us.
"Please do me the favour to a.s.sure His Majesty the Emperor of my continued efforts in the service of Alexandra Feodorovna, even though matters are daily growing more complicated. Anna [Madame Vyrubova], moreover, is more difficult to please.
"Both Sturmer and Protopopoff are under my protection, and I have already contrived to advance them. Kokovtsov is growing in favour and will be a force to be reckoned with in the immediate future.
Urge Mia.s.soyedeff, from your side, to exercise the greatest caution. There are whispers, but I have endeavoured to stifle them by contriving his advancement through the Emperor, who yesterday decorated him.
"The Imperial pair will shortly visit the Danish and Swedish Courts, and probably go for a cruise in Norwegian waters, though there is, as yet, no announcement.
"I am still working upon the project you set out when we met in Helsingfors two months ago regarding the reduction and weakening of the army. I have already initiated the matter through ladies whose husbands are in the Ministry of War. It will mean the expenditure of a considerable sum of your money, but I know it will be a mere bagatelle if your object is accomplished.
"I have to acknowledge a payment of one hundred thousand roubles into the Azof Bank from an unknown source. Please remember that S. in Paris and J. in Rome are making big claims upon me, and that next month I must receive a similar sum.
"Hardt has told me that matters are progressing well at Carlton House Terrace, and also in Paris. Of that I am glad to hear. Let our next meeting be at the Phoenix Hotel in Abo, where I am unknown, and which you can reach without notice. At present I dare not leave Russia, as Her Majesty will not hear of it.
"It would be as well to make the next payment through the Aktiebank in Abo. They would not suspect.
"Do not fail to impress upon both Sukhomlinoff and Mia.s.soyedeff the necessity for the utmost caution. Till we meet."
When I had typed this at his dictation I handed it to him, and he managed painfully to append his illiterate signature.
Then I placed the sheets in an envelope and gave them to Hardt to convey in secret to the headquarters of the German Secret Service in the Koniggratzerstra.s.se in Berlin.
"And, friend Hardt," Rasputin said, as the Kaiser"s emissary placed the letter carefully in his wallet, "please impress upon Number Seventy what I have said about money. All this costs much. Tell him that sometimes when inordinate demands are made upon me--as you know they are often are--I have to use my own funds in order to satisfy them. Smith in London receives unlimited funds through the Deutsche Bank, I know, so please tell our friend from me that I expect similar treatment in future."
The Starets was one of the most far-seeing and mercenary scoundrels. He had accounts in different names in half-a-dozen banks in Petrograd and Moscow, into which he constantly made payments as the result of his widespread campaign of espionage and the blackmailing of silly women who fell beneath his uncanny spell.
When Hardt had left, the saint opened another bottle of champagne and drank it all from a tumbler, afterwards consuming half a bottle of brandy. I was busy with three days" acc.u.mulation of letters, and did not notice it until, an hour later, I found him dead asleep on the floor of the dining-room--a pretty spectacle if presented to the millions of our patriotic Russians who believed in the Tsar as their "Father" and in the divinity of the "holy man" who directed the Empire"s affairs.
The saint filled me with increasing disgust, yet I confess I had become fascinated by the widespread and desperate conspiracies which he either engineered himself or of which he pulled the most important strings.
In the plot against Stolypin, though none dreamed of it, he had been the most active agent. Stolypin, a purely honest and loyal Russian, who, on taking office as Prime Minister, was actuated by a firm determination to do his level best for the Empire, was an unwanted statesman. He was too honest, and, therefore, dangerous to the Court camarilla set up and paid by Potsdam.
As the days pa.s.sed the monk frequently referred to him as a thorn in the side of the Empress.
"The fellow must be got rid of!" he declared to me more than once. "He suspects a lot, and he knows too much. He is dangerous to us, Feodor--very dangerous!"
One night, when we were together in his room at Tsarskoe-Selo, after he had been dining _en famille_ with the Imperial family, he remarked:
"Things are going well. I saw the lawyer Altschiller to-day. All is prepared for the coup against Stolypin, who is still ignorant that Vera Baltz is in Petrograd."
I knew Altschiller, who often called at the Poltavskaya. He was a close friend of Monsieur Raeff, whom Rasputin, when all-powerful a little later on, actually appointed as Procurator of the Holy Synod, having placed the appointment upon the Emperor"s desk to sign!
The law case was, however, delayed. Hardt was on one of his frequent absences--in Germany, no doubt--and matters did not move so rapidly as to satisfy the Empress. The whole plot was to keep the Prime Minister in the dark until the moment when the skeleton of his past should be dragged from its cupboard.
As announced by Rasputin, the Emperor and Empress had visited Denmark and Norway on board the _Standart_, and were back again at Peterhof, when one day Rasputin received his friend Boris Sturmer, the bureaucrat, at that time struggling strenuously for advancement. In the monk"s den Sturmer, chatting about Stolypin and the vindictive woman who had come to Petrograd to destroy him--for he was one of the paid servants of Potsdam, and in consequence knew most of the secrets--said:
"Have you, Father, ever met a Jew named Bagrov?"
"Never to my knowledge. Why?"
"Because I know from my friend Venikoff, one of the a.s.sistant-directors of Secret Police, that the man, a discharged _agent-provocateur_ and incensed at the way he has been treated by Stolypin, has joined forces with some mysterious young woman named Baltz. There is a whisper that between them they are engineering a plot to a.s.sa.s.sinate the Prime Minister!"
Rasputin"s strange eyes met mine. Both of us knew more than this struggling sycophant.
"Bagrov?" the saint repeated. "Who is he?"
"Oh! A fellow who was a.s.sistant to Azeff in some disgraceful matters in Warsaw--an _agent-provocateur_ who lived afterwards for some time in Paris and on the Riviera. He attributes his downfall to Stolypin, and hence is most bitter against him. He has, I hear, fallen in love with the woman Baltz, who hails from Samara."
"Well?" asked the saint.
"Well?--nothing," laughed the man with the goat-beard. "I simply tell you what I know. There is a plot--that is all! And as far as I can discern the swifter Stolypin leaves the Court, the easier it will be for Her Majesty and ourselves--eh? While Stolypin is daily with the Emperor there is hourly danger for us."
"In that I certainly agree," declared Rasputin. "We must be watchful--very watchful."
We remained alert--all of us. That same night Rasputin informed the Empress of the secret plot of the black-haired Vera and her lover Bagrov.
The Court left for the Crimea next day, and Rasputin travelled with the Imperial family. Stolypin, in ignorance of what was in progress, was of the party, I being left in Petrograd to follow three days later.